542 On the Load and Relative Geology of Singapore, [Junk, 



are parallel, or approximately so, to the Malayan, and like them, spring 

 from the great central system of Asia. The chain of the Peninsula of 

 Malaya is directly continued to this region, and from it descend nearly 

 parallel chains through Burmah, Siam and Cochin China. These 

 ranges determine the general direction of the sea coasts wherever these 

 are exposed to waves sufficiently strong to prevent the formation and 

 extension of alluvial plains. The western coasts of India and of the 

 Tenasserim Provinces, Siam, the gulf of Siam and the eastern coast of 

 Cochin China are thus fixed. A wide and interesting field of inquiry 

 is opened up by the probable geological connection between the regions 

 of these ranges and those of the Indian Archipelago generally, Aus- 

 tralia and the Archipelagoes of the Pacific, evidenced by the prevalence 

 of parellel lines of elevation, and perhaps also by organic remains, such 

 as the fossil elephant and some of the carboniferous plants of New 

 South Wales. The former existence of a great Australasian continent, 

 an extension probably of the present continent of Asia, which seems 

 to result from Mr. Darwin's theory of Atolls, would be an inference in 

 accordance with these facts. Viewing the whole region, interspersed 

 with peninsulas and islands, from the Indian Ocean to the heart of the 

 Pacific, as one, it appears that De Beaumont's theory of parallel recti- 

 linear or oblong areas of elevation and subsidence, which Mr. Darwin 

 has applied to the eastern tracts, requires modification, and that if we 

 conceive curvilinear lines or systems of parallel curvilinear lines pro- 

 ceding from centres and often meeting similar lines or systems from 

 other centres, and again lateral and secondary lines diverging from the 

 principal, the arrangement of the observed ranges will assume greater 

 symmetry, and be found perhaps to accord with the hypothesis that 

 one widely extended mechanical pulsion, accompanied by local foci of 

 intense development from weakness in the rocks or increased plutonic 

 or volcanic action, gave the first direction to all the main lines of 

 elevation. Thus let us conceive such a centre to be situated in the 

 western half of New Guinea, and we have some independent warrant 

 for doing so, in the circumstance that the mountains of its unexplored 

 interior appear to attain a magnitude unusual in the Archipelago. From 

 this focus we may trace one great curvilinear fracture or band of rupture 

 of the earth's crust through the Sunda Islands to Chittagong ; a second 

 through the mountainous volcanic islands of Ceram and Bonro, and 



