4 AUSTRALASIA. 



Sumatra to Tasmania, also constitutes, notwithstanding its present fragmentary 

 ctaracter, a continental division somewhat analogous to Africa and South Anierica. 

 The various divisions of the globe are disposed in twos along three parallel axes, 

 an arrangement best seen in the symmetrical disposition of North and South 

 America. But the same dual grouping may also be detected in the great divisions 

 of the Old World. Here Europe, formerly separated from Asia by the Caspian 

 and Aral Seas, and other lacustrine depressions, forms with Africa the western 

 group. The eastern, still more irregular in its general disposition, comprises the 

 vast Asiatic continent and all the innumerable islands which are crowded together 

 in the south-eastern waters between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. These 

 extensive lands are obviously a continent reduced to fragments, and forming an 

 extension of Further India into the southern hemisphere. Hence, not without 

 reason, some writers have suggested the expression " Insul-India " for the 

 equatorial regions which form a southern continuation of Indo-China across the 

 Great Ocean. The vast island of Australia, with continental dimensions, together 

 with the surrounding lands, has similarly received the general designation of 

 " Australasia," and this term itself has been extended by Wallace and others to 

 the whole of the insular world sometimes known as Oceania. Australasia thus 

 comprises the Eastern Archipelago, with the Philippines, Australia, and adjacent 

 islands, New Guinea, New Zealand, and all the South Sea Islands (Melanesia, 

 Micronesia, and Polynesia), and in this wide sense it is taken as the title of the 

 present volume. 



Thk Antarctic Lands. 



Yet another continent probably exists in the immensity of the Southern Ocean. 

 The antarctic polar region, still unexplored for a space of about 6,500,000 square 

 miles, assuredly comprises vast stretches of dry land, which by many geographers 

 have already been traced on the maps as forming a continuous mainland sweeping 

 round the south polar circle. Thus to the " open sea " supposed to encompass 

 the North Pole would correspond an ice-bound continent about the South Pole. 

 But, however this be, the vast masses of ice-floes met b}^ navigators venturing into 

 the antarctic waters attest the existence of high land stretching southwards. 

 Moreover, the sounding instruments have fished up fragments of granites, schists, 

 sandstones, and limestones recently broken off ; while at certain isolated points 

 explorers have really seen, or thought they have descried through the mists, the 

 outlines of long, ice-covered southern ranges. 



Without including the antarctic lands lying beyond the sixtieth degree 

 south latitude, all the islands and half-continental lands in the Indian and Pacific 

 Oceans comprise a total superficial area far greater than that of Eurojoe. Of the 

 hundreds of scattered insular groups, some are altogether uninhabited, while others 

 are very thinly peopled. Nevertheless, the collective population of Australasia 

 exceeds that of South America, and its average increase is rapid, notwithstanding 

 the depopulation of several oceanic archipelagoes. The total area of all the dry 

 land has been estimated at about 4,600,000 square miles, with a probable popula- 



