found nowhere beyond the limits of this insular tract,
which has hence been named the Malay Archipelago.
To the ordinary Englishman this is perhaps the least
known part of the globe. Our possessions in it are few
and scanty; scarcely any of our travellers go to explore i t ;
and in many collections of maps it is . almost ignored,
being divided between Asia and the Pacific Islands. It
thus happens that few persons realize that, as a whole, it
is comparable with the primary divisions of the globe, and
that some of its separate islands are larger than France
or the Austrian empire. The traveller, however, soon
acquires different ideas. He sails for days, or even for
weeks, along the shores of one of these great islands, often
so great that its inhabitants believe it to be a vast continent.
He finds that voyages among these islands are
commonly reckoned by weeks and months, and that their
several inhabitants are often as little known to each other
as are the native races of the northern to those of the
southern continent of America. He soon comes to look
upon this region as one apart from the rest of the world,
with its own races of men and its own aspects of nature ;
with its own ideas, feelings, customs, and modes of speech,
and with a climate, vegetation, and animated life altogether
peculiar to itself.
From many points of view these islands form one
compact geographical whole, and as such they have always
been treated by travellers and men of science; but a more
careful and detailed study of them under various aspects,
reveals the unexpected fact that they are divisible into
two portions nearly equal in extent, which widely differ
in their-natural products, and really form parts of two
of the primary divisions of the earth. I have been able
to prove this in considerable detail by my observations on
the natural history of the various parts of the Archipelago;
and as in the description of my travels and residence in
the several islands I shall have to refer continually to this
view, and adduce facts in support of it, I have thought it
advisable to commence with a general sketch of such of
the main features of the Malayan region as will render
the facts hereafter brought forward more interesting, and
their bearing on the general question more easily understood.
I proceed, therefore, to sketch the limits and
extent of the Archipelago, and to point out the more
striking features of its geology, pnysical geography,
vegetation, and animal life.
Definition and Boundaries.—For reasons which depend
mainly on the distribution of animal life, I consider the
Malay Archipelago to include the Malay Peninsula as far
as Tenasserim, and the Hicobar Islands on the west, the
Philippines on the north, and the Solomon Islands beyond
Hew Guinea, on the east. All the great islands included
within these limits are connected together by innumerable
b 2