ts, and it is the opinion of eminent botanists,
that no such clearly-defined regions pan be marked out in botany as in
zoology. The causes which tend to diffusion are here most powerful, and
have led to such intermingling of the floras of adjacent regions that
none but broad and general divisions can now be detected. 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 contrast: 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 New 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 of
the great Malay Archipelago.

CHAPTER XL. THE RACES OF MAN IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO.

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 New 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 which alone has any place in history. What may
be called the true Malay races, as distinguished from ot