THE OCEANIC BASIN. 



3 



comparing the formation of the Athmtic with that of the Indian Ocean, with its 

 elevated coastlines of Java and Sumatra, of the Arrakan highlands, the submerged 

 chain of the Maldives and Laccadives, the Ghats, the Persian and Madagascar 

 uplands ? 



The vast oceanic basin is by no means a boundless expanse destitute of reefs, 

 islands, and insular groups. Like the Atlantic it has its upheaved lands, not only 

 such as, lying in the vicinity of the continents, might be regarded as detached 

 fragments of the African, Asiatic, and American mainlands, but also archipelagoes 

 of all sizes strewn over the wide expanse of waters at great distances from the 



Fig-. 2. — The Geeat Oceanic Hemisphere (Easteen Section). 



surrounding coastlines. Some of the islands scattered over the oceanic hemi- 

 sphere of the globe are even so extensive that they have been regarded either as 

 the remains of a past or else the first corner-stones of a future continent. Mada- 

 gascar, the Comoros, and the Seychelles have been treated by many naturalists as 

 the surviving fragments of a vanished world, which from a typical branch of its 

 now dispersed fauna has received the name of " Lemuria." In the great Pacific 

 Ocean farther east, thousands of islands, cone-shaped or disposed in circular groups, 

 seem to form part either of a submerged continent or of a new world in process of 

 formation. The insular region which stretches south-east of Indo-China from 



