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THE ISLANDS AND THEIR POPULATION L9 
similar to that of Mindoro. Palawan is separated from 
Borneo by only slight depths of sea, and geographically 
forms nothing but an outlying extension of this island 
with which its flora and fauna are definitely connected. 
Continental Affiliations. The East Indies are 
divided by geologists and biologists into two great 
halves, a western and an eastern. The former consti- 
tutes a more or less submerged part of the continent of 
Asia; the eastern half is closely linked with Australia, 
and at one time formed a continuous land mass with 
New Guinea and that continent. In the great southern 
chain of the East Indies, the dividing line between these 
two continental areas passes through the narrow but 
deep channel which separates the islands of Bali and 
Lombok and then continues northward through the 
Straits of Macassar. Sumatra, Java, and Borneo are 
the great islands with Asiatic affiliations; Celebes, the 
Moluccas, and New Guinea, the principal ones that link 
up with Australia. The animal life of the two divisions 
is markedly distinct. In the west, such well-known 
forms of the Asiatic mainland as the elephant, rhino- 
ceros, tapir, tiger, and orang utan are found; in the 
east, marsupials and birds of paradise. 
Racially and historically, a similar division is notable. 
The western islands are inhabited wholly by a brown, 
straight-haired people, the so-called Malay race of the 
older books, whose primary relationships are unques- 
tionably Mongoloid and therefore Asiatic. In the east- 
ern half of the Indies, black, broad-nosed, and wavy or 
curly-haired people predominate, in fact constitute the 
sole native type of New Guinea and Australia, and reach 
far out into the Pacific, where they have given its name 
to Melanesia, the region of ‘‘black islanders.’’ These 
people, while not identical with the African Negroes, 
are very similar to them. 


