APTER XI.

ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.

Mr. Wallace and the Malay Archipelago--Animals--
Birds--General characteristics of plants--European
flora in mountains--Darwin's explanation--Fruits--
History of cinchona introduction--Mr. Ledger's
story--Indiarubber.

No less than eight years (1854--1862) were employed by Mr. Wallace, the
naturalist, in "the study of man and nature" in the Malay Archipelago.
During this period he collected a vast number of specimens of animals
and plants, and, some years after his return to England, gave the
results of his travels to the world in his "Malay Archipelago." The
general conclusions which Mr. Wallace was led to form are of such
interest, that I shall endeavour very briefly to lay them before the
reader.

In the first place, the evidence supplied by the nature of the
distribution of the various plants and animals is such as to point to
the belief that the whole Archipelago is composed of fragments of two
separate continents. The Malay islands must, therefore, be divided into
two groups. Of these groups the first, roughly consisting of Sumatra,
Java, Borneo, and the Philippines, once formed part of the continent of
Asia; while in the second, the Celebes, Flores, Timor, the Moluccas, and
New Guinea, we have fragments of a great Pacific continent, which has
been gradually and irregularly broken up. The inhabitants of the former
region, to which Mr. Wallace gives the name Indo-Malayan, are Malays;
those of the latter, the Austro-Malayan, are Papuans.

Secondly, the intervening seas, which surround the various islands which
have now taken the place of these former continental tracts, have been
formed by the subsidence of land from which the foundations have been
withdrawn by the continued activity of a long volcanic chain which
traverses the Archipelago from end to end. And therefore, strange as it
may seem at first sight, the fertile island of Java, with its rich
plains and abundant vegetation--so unlike the traditional barrenness of
a volcanic region--is the work of this subterranean energy.

"The island of Java contains more volcanoes, active and extinct, than
any other known district of equal extent. They are about forty-five in
number, and many of them exhibit most beautiful examples of the volcanic
cone on a large scale, single or double, with entire or truncated
summits, and averaging 10,000 feet high."[20]

[Footnote 20: "Malay Archipelago."]

Thirdly, not only