These remarks have an important bearing on the problem
of dividing the surface of the earth into great regions, distinguished
by the radical difference of their natural productions.
Such difference we now know to be the direct
result of long-continued separation by more or less impassable
barriers; and as wide oceans and great contrasts
of temperature are the most complete barriers to the
dispersal of all terrestrial forms of life, the primary
divisions of the earth should in the main serve for all
terrestrial organisms. However various may be the effects
of climate, however unequal the means of distribution,
these will never altogether obliterate the radical effects of
long-continued isolation; and it is my firm conviction, that
when the botany and the entomology of Hew Guinea and
the surrounding islands become as well known as are
their mammals and birds, these departments of nature
will also plainly indicate the radical distinctions of the
Indo-Malayan and Austro-Malayan regions ©f the great
Malay Archipelago.
CHAPTER XL.
THE RACES OP MAN IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.
j" PROPOSE to conclude this account of my Eastern
travels, with a short statement of my views as to the
races of man which inhabit the various parts of the
Archipelago, their chief physical and mental characteristics,
their affinities with each other and with surrounding tribes,
their migrations, and their probable origin.
Two very strongly contrasted races inhabit the Archipelago—
the Malays, occupying almost exclusively the
larger western half of it, and the Papuans, whose headquarters
are Hew Guinea and several of the adjacent
islands. Between these in locality, are found tribes who
are also intermediate in their chief characteristics, and it
is sometimes a nice point to determine whether they
belong to one or the other race, or have been formed by a
mixture of the two.
The Malay is undoubtedly the most important of these
two races, as it is the one which is the most civilized,
which has come most into contact with Europeans, and