& 
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF 
haustion of the plutonie energy, or the conversion of its upheav¬ 
ing into an ejecting action, on the opening of fractures along 
the outskirts of the region, before the feebler action there had 
brought the sea bed into contact with the atmosphere, the result 
has been to form an expanse of shallow seas and islands, else¬ 
where unequalled in the world, but perhaps not greater in pro¬ 
portion to the wide continental shores, and the vast bulk of dry 
land, in front of which it is spread out, than other archipela¬ 
goes are to the particular countries, or continental sections, with 
which they are connected. 
The forms and positions of these islands bear an older date 
than that of any limited subsidence or elevation of the region 
after its formation* They were determined by the same forces 
which originally caused the platform itself to swell up above 
the deep floor of the southern ^)cean • and it was one prolonged 
act of the subterranean power to raise the Himalayas into the 
aerial level of perpetual snow, to spread out the submarine bed 
on wliieh the rivers were afterwards to pile the hot plains of 
Bengal, and to mould the surface of the southern region, so 
that when it rose above, or sunk into, the sea to certain levels, 
the mutual influences of air and sea and land should be so 
balanced, that while the last drew from the first a perennial 
ripeness and beauty of summer, it owed to the second a peren¬ 
nial freshness and fecundity of spring. Hence it is that, in the 
Archipelago, while the bank of black mud, daily overflowed by 
the tides, is hidden beneath a dense forest, and the polypifer 
has scarcely reared its tower to the sea’s surface before it is 
converted into a green islet, the granitic rocks of the highest 
plutonie summits, and the smoke of the volcanic peaks, rise 
from amidst equally luxuriant, and more varied, vegetation. 
Certainly, the most powerfully impressive of all the characteris¬ 
tics of the Archipelago is ' its botanical exuberance, which has 
exercised the greatest influence on the history and habits of its 
human inhabitants, and which, as the most obvious, first excites 
the admiration of the voyager, antf from its never staling, be¬ 
cause ever renewing itself in fresh and changeful beauty, retains 
its hold upon our feelings to the last. 
When we enter the seas of the Archipelago we are in a 
