in the island of Timor and all the smaller islands around
it, in which there is absolutely no forest such as exists in
the other islands, and this character extends in a lesser
degree to Flores, Sumbawa, Lombock, and Bali.
In Timor the most common trees are Eucalypti of
several species, so characteristic of Australia, with sandalwood,
acacia, and other sorts in less abundance. These
are scattered over the country more or less thickly, but
never so as to deserve the name of a forest. Coarse and
scanty grasses grow beneath them on the more barren
hills, and a luxuriant herbage in the moister localities.
In the islands between Timor and Java there is often a
more thickly wooded country, abounding in thorny and;
prickly trees. These seldom reach any great height, and
during the force of the dry season they almost completely
lose their leaves, allowing the ground beneath them to
be parched up, and contrasting strongly with the damp,
gloomy, ever-verdant forests of the other islands. This
peculiar character, which extends in a less degree to the
southern peninsula of Celebes and the east end of Java,
is most probably owing to the proximity of Australia.
The south-east monsoon, which lasts for about two-thirds
of the year (from March to November), blowing over the
northern parts of that country, produces a degree of heat
and dryness which assimilates the vegetation and physical
aspect of the adjacent islands to its own. A little further
eastward in Timor-laut and the K6 Islands, a moister
climate prevails, the south-east winds blowing from the
Pacific through Torres Straits and over the damp forests
of New Guinea, and as a consequence every rocky islet is
clothed with verdure to its very summit. Further west
again, as the same dry winds blow over a wider and
wider extent of ocean, they have time to absorb fresh
moisture, and we accordingly find the island of Java
possessing a less and less arid climate, till in the extreme
west near Batavia rain occurs more or less all the year
round, and the mountains are everywhere clothed with
forests of unexampled luxuriance.
Contrasts in Depth of Sea.—It was first pointed out by
Mr. George Windsor Earl, in a paper read before the Eoyal
Geographical Society in 1845, and subsequently in a
pamphlet “ On the Physical Geography of South-Eastern
Asia and Australia,” dated 1855, that a shallow sea connected
the great islands of Sumatra, Java, and Borneo
with the Asiatic continent, with which their natural productions
generally agreed; while a similar shallow sea
connected New Guinea and some of the adjacent islands
to Australia, all being characterised by the presence of
marsupials.
We have here a clue to the most radical contrast in the
Archipelago, and by following it out in detail I have
arrived at the conclusion that we can draw a line among