MALAYSIA AND THE PACIFIC ARCHIPELAGOES 
O 
in any of the other divisions of the globe, except, per¬ 
haps, Asia. The most striking contrasts of geological 
structure are exhibited by the coral islands of the Pacific, 
the active volcanoes of the Malay islands, and the ex¬ 
tremely ancient rocks of New Zealand and Tasmania. 
The most opposite aspects of vegetation are presented 
by the luxuriant forests of the Moluccas and New 
Guinea, and the parched ground and thorny thickets of 
the Eastern Sunda Islands. 
Where the land surface is so much broken up into 
islands, we cannot expect to find any of the more promi¬ 
nent geographical features which characterise large con¬ 
tinents, and hence there are nowhere great lakes or 
rivers of large size. Mountains are numerous, but are 
for the most part volcanic, and are much higher in the 
islands than on the continent of Australia, In such 
remote localities as Sumatra, Borneo, the Sandwich Islands, 
and New Zealand, there are mountains which do not 
fall far short of 14,000 feet. Of the snow-covered 
Charles Louis range in Dutch New Guinea we have as 
yet no very trustworthy information, but there is little 
doubt that its peaks attain a very much greater eleva¬ 
tion. 
4. Ocean Depths 
The land and water of the earth’s surface is so un¬ 
equally distributed that it is possible to divide the globe 
into two equal parts, in one of which—the land hemi¬ 
sphere—land and water shall be almost exactly equal, 
while in the other—the water hemisphere—there shall 
be nearly eight times as much water as land. The centre 
of the former is in St. George’s Channel, and of the latter 
at a spot some 600 miles S.S.E. of New Zealand. 
