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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Malay Archipelago' (Volumes 1 & 2), Alfred Russel Wallace intricately documents his extensive travels through the diverse islands of Southeast Asia, blending scientific observation with evocative prose. The book serves not only as a travelogue but also as a pioneering work in biogeography, as Wallace meticulously catalogs the flora and fauna of the region while presenting his groundbreaking ideas on evolution. His firsthand experiences in the Malay Archipelago are enhanced by rich descriptions and reflections on the interplay between nature and human cultures, making it a significant contribution to both science and literature during the Victorian era. Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, is renowned for independently formulating the theory of natural selection, which lends a profound depth to his writings. His fascination with natural history began early in life, leading him on a relentless pursuit of knowledge that would culminate in this monumental work. Born into modest circumstances, Wallace's experiences shaped his worldview, fueling his passion for exploration and scientific inquiry in unfamiliar and often challenging environments. This seminal work is highly recommended for those interested in natural history, evolution, and the rich tapestry of life that characterizes the Malay Archipelago. Wallace's keen observations and engaging narrative style will illuminate the reader's understanding of the region's biodiversity and its significance in the context of evolutionary theory. His synthesis of science and literature invites both scholars and casual readers alike to appreciate the beauty and complexity of nature. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Malay Archipelago (Vol. 1&2)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Across a chain of tropic islands where two great realms of life meet, a patient naturalist traces the shifting boundary of nature’s design, mapping difference, kinship, and change with a collector’s net, a barometer, and a skeptic’s eye, discovering that the edges between worlds are porous, that birds, beetles, and butterflies can redraw our understanding of the earth, and that careful travel can illuminate the forces that shape living things and our place among them.
The Malay Archipelago (Vol. 1&2) by Alfred Russel Wallace is a landmark account of an eight-year scientific journey undertaken between 1854 and 1862 and published in two volumes in 1869. Part travel narrative, part natural history, and part ethnographic observation, it surveys the immense island world lying between continental Asia and Australia. Wallace’s purpose was to document the flora and fauna, understand their distribution, and share the methods and meanings of field science with a broad readership. The result is a richly observed portrait of landscapes, species, and societies encountered with disciplined curiosity and an eye for patterns across place and time.
This book is considered a classic because it unites empirical rigor with narrative grace, giving enduring form to a new way of seeing nature. Alongside foundational works of nineteenth-century science, it helped establish biogeography as a discipline and modeled how travel writing could carry serious intellectual weight. Its pages influenced generations of naturalists and writers by demonstrating that exact description and patient comparison can yield large conclusions. The Malay Archipelago endures in literary history as a testament to careful observation, lucid prose, and the fruitful marriage of exploration, data, and reflective storytelling.
Its impact extends beyond literature into the architecture of modern biological thought. Wallace’s delineation of a faunal boundary—later known as the Wallace Line—helped clarify the deep historical forces that sort species across islands and seas. The book’s meticulous notes on variation, distribution, and ecology informed later work in biogeography and conservation, while its accessible style broadened public understanding of natural history. Terms such as Wallacea, denoting the transitional zone between Asian and Australasian life, reflect the lasting imprint of insights first assembled here. Scholars, field biologists, and curious readers continue to draw on its observations and methods.
Written after his return to Britain and distilled from field journals, letters, and specimen lists, the two volumes present a coherent narrative arc without sacrificing scientific detail. Wallace frames his travels as a sequence of inquiries: Why do neighboring islands host such different animals? How do geography, climate, and geological history shape the forms of life? He pursued answers by collecting many thousands of specimens, comparing their features, and mapping their ranges. Yet he also aimed to communicate the discipline of attention—how to look, record, and reason—so that readers could grasp both the evidence and the process of discovery.
The canvas is vast: Sumatra and Java with their volcanoes, the rainforests of Borneo, the intricate coastlines of Sulawesi, the spice-rich Moluccas, Timor and its drier hills, and islands near New Guinea where Australasian affinities grow stronger. Across monsoon seasons and calms, in villages and forest camps, Wallace catalogued birds and mammals, butterflies and beetles, shells and plants, always relating creatures to their habitats. His route crisscrossed channels whose waters seemed narrow but whose biological contrasts were immense. The narrative moves from island to island, building a comparative portrait of a region that is both unified and profoundly diverse.
Wallace wrote to make sense of distribution—why some creatures cluster, others diverge, and many subtly vary—and to share the exhilaration of fieldwork. He addresses non-specialists with clarity while offering observations that specialists still consult. He sought neither sensational adventure nor abstract speculation, but the middle path where disciplined travel yields trustworthy knowledge. The book also records the practical underpinnings of science: the logistics of collecting, the timing of seasons, the value of local expertise. Without descending into technicality, he articulates aims and methods, inviting readers to watch reasoning take shape from accumulations of small, verifiable facts.
Historically, the work sits amid vigorous nineteenth-century debates on the origin and transformation of species. Wallace independently conceived the principle of natural selection during his time in the archipelago, and his insights were presented jointly with related ideas in 1858. The Malay Archipelago is not a treatise staking priority; rather, it offers a wealth of concrete observations that illuminate variation, adaptation, and the geographic partitioning of life. In doing so, it complements theoretical discussions with a grounded, observable record from a region whose islands serve as natural laboratories for testing how isolation and connection mold living forms.
As literature, the book resonates through its disciplined voice and sense of place. Wallace’s scenes—forests heavy with humidity, coral shores, sudden storms, the hush before a dawn chorus—are rendered with a restraint that heightens their authority. The pacing alternates between long patience and flashes of discovery, mirroring fieldwork itself. He arranges episodes to accumulate meaning: a bird’s call heard on one island is weighed against silence on the next, a butterfly’s pattern reappears and shifts. The prose is measured and exact, yet suffused with wonder, making readers feel the texture of islands seen, handled, and understood.
The narrative also attends to people and practices, acknowledging the skills of sailors, hunters, and guides whose knowledge made collecting and travel possible. Wallace’s perspective is shaped by his century, yet he frequently records technologies, navigation, and crafts with respect and circumspection. He notes exchange and cooperation across languages and customs, and he is alert to how trade, environment, and habit intertwine. While anchored in natural history, the book opens out to culture, economy, and daily life, reminding readers that scientific discovery is conducted among communities and that attention to place includes the human lives that sustain it.
For contemporary audiences, The Malay Archipelago remains strikingly relevant. Its island-by-island comparisons anticipate modern studies of fragmentation, endemism, and resilience—concepts central to conservation in an era of rapid environmental change. The clarity of its method offers a template for evidence-based thinking across disciplines. As travel writing, it models ethical attentiveness and intellectual humility, virtues no less necessary today. And as a story of patient inquiry, it speaks to readers navigating complex borders—ecological, cultural, and intellectual—showing how careful observation can replace presumption with understanding and transform curiosity into knowledge that endures.
What this classic ultimately offers is a framework and a feeling: a framework for seeing the world as an archipelago of relationships shaped by history and chance, and a feeling of sustained wonder grounded in fact. Themes of boundary and connection, variation and pattern, effort and illumination run through its pages. Wallace’s two-volume work invites readers to move slowly, compare closely, and think across scales. It persists because it is both a scientific milestone and a compelling narrative, animated by integrity and delight. That combination continues to engage, instruct, and inspire, making the book perennially new.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Malay Archipelago presents Wallace's eight-year exploration from 1854 to 1862 across what are now Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Combining travel narrative with natural history, he explains his aims: to collect animals and plants, document their distribution, and understand how geography shapes life. Beginning in Singapore and Malacca, he describes routes, monsoon seasons, and the practicalities of hiring local crews and establishing field stations. The book is arranged by island groups, moving progressively eastward. Wallace notes the vastness and variety of the region, outlines his methods of collecting and preserving specimens, and sets expectations for observations on geology, climate, people, and trade alongside fauna and flora.
He starts with the Malay Peninsula's ports, then proceeds to Borneo. In Sarawak and the lowland forests around the Simunjon coal works he studies the orangutan, describing its habitats, behavior, and local hunting practices. He portrays Dayak communities, river travel, longhouses, and shifting cultivation, while detailing the richness of beetles, butterflies, and birds. Difficult terrain, heavy rains, and periodic fevers shape his schedules. Wallace records techniques used to trap insects, skin birds, and ship collections, and he comments on timber forests, peat swamps, and mangroves. These chapters establish his close attention to local ecologies and the practical challenges of sustained fieldwork in tropical conditions.
After Borneo he visits Java and Sumatra, contrasting their volcanic mountains, fertile soils, and dense population with wilder districts elsewhere. He examines active and dormant cones, earthquakes, and hot springs, linking geology with luxuriant vegetation and abundant insect life. Botanical gardens, cultivated fields, and forest remnants provide complementary collecting grounds. Moving on to Bali and Lombok, he notes a striking shift in animal life over a narrow strait, with characteristic western forms diminishing and eastern forms appearing. The abrupt change across deep channels becomes a recurring theme, prompting comparisons of birds and mammals and foreshadowing his later regional division of the archipelago.
Wallace devotes extended attention to Celebes (Sulawesi), using Makassar and Menado as bases for inland journeys. The island's radiating peninsulas and rugged interior host a distinct fauna, including the maleo, babirusa, and tarsier, along with peculiar butterflies and beetles. He emphasizes how Celebes differs from nearby Borneo despite geographic proximity, and how mountain ranges, coasts, and coral fringes structure habitats. Detailed accounts of provisioning, relations with local chiefs, and routes by footpath and canoe accompany lists of birds and insects. These sections reinforce that each island's history can be inferred from its unique combination of species, landforms, and surrounding seas.
From Celebes he turns to the Moluccas, establishing a long residence on Ternate, with excursions to Halmahera (Gilolo), Batchian (Bacan), Ambon, and Banda. He discusses the spice trade's legacy, Dutch administration, earthquakes, and volcanic scenery. Collecting yields include many parrots and pigeons and, notably, the golden birdwing butterfly later named Ornithoptera croesus from Batchian. During an illness on Ternate he drafts a concise essay on variation and the origin of species, sending it to England while continuing his field program. Throughout, he contrasts Moluccan assemblages with those of the west, adding evidence for a major faunal boundary within the archipelago.
An extended expedition to the Aru Islands brings close study of birds-of-paradise, marsupials, and Papuan communities. Wallace describes sago production, coastal praus, forest camps, and months-long hunting routines organized with local experts. He details display trees of birds-of-paradise, methods of obtaining specimens, and the striking diversity of butterflies and beetles in swamp forest and limestone hills. The climate, food supplies, and health risks demand careful planning, yet the collecting success is substantial. Aru's fauna resembles that of New Guinea, reinforcing the separation from western islands. Observations on trade in feathers and resins complement notes on geology, tides, and reefs.
He attempts exploration on the New Guinea coast at Dorey, working from a beach settlement amid heavy rains and intermittent illness. Language barriers, shortages, and local conflicts limit inland travel, but collections of birds-of-paradise, pigeons, insects, and marsupials continue. Subsequent visits to the Ke Islands, Ceram, and Buru add further contrasts in birds, butterflies, and plants, and illustrate the recurring effects of isolation, currents, and depth barriers on distribution. Wallace records storms, earthquakes, and navigation hazards, along with everyday routines of drying specimens, preserving skins, and shipping boxes. These journeys complete the eastward sweep and provide material for broader synthesis.
In concluding chapters Wallace assembles evidence for two great zoological provinces separated by persistent deep channels. He identifies a sharp boundary, later called the Wallace Line, running between Bali and Lombok and between Borneo and Celebes. To the west, the Sunda group (Sumatra, Borneo, Java, and their satellites) shares a continental mammal fauna with Asia; to the east, the Papuan or Sahul group (New Guinea and Australia, with adjacent islands) is defined by marsupials and birds-of-paradise. Islands such as Celebes and the Moluccas form a transitional belt with mixed elements. Bathymetric maps, coral reefs, and comparisons of mammals, birds, and insects support the view that past land connections and barriers governed distribution.
The book also surveys peoples and economies, contrasting Malay, Dayak, and Papuan languages, crafts, navigation, and village life, and noting the impact of trade in spices, birds, and forest products. Wallace summarizes climate, vegetation zones, and island geology, and enumerates the thousands of specimens secured through local partnerships and careful logistics. He closes by linking travel observations to a general message: the Malay Archipelago offers a clear demonstration that geography and geological history shape the formation and distribution of species. The narrative ends with his return, the ordering of collections, and the presentation of results that informed later biogeography and evolution.
Historical Context
Alfred Russel Wallace’s The Malay Archipelago is set during his eight-year expedition from 1854 to 1862 across what Europeans then called the Indian and Pacific borderlands. He worked mainly within the Dutch East Indies and the British Straits Settlements, moving through Singapore, Malacca, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi (Celebes), the Moluccas, and the Papuan world of the Aru Islands, Waigeo, and New Guinea’s fringes. The period overlapped with high imperial governance, energetic trade, and a rapidly professionalizing scientific culture. Tropical monsoons, tectonic volatility, and maritime channels shaped travel and logistics, while complex Malay, Dayak, Papuan, and Bugis societies provided guides, porters, and knowledge networks.
The book’s geography maps onto a maritime world threaded by sailing prahus and increasingly by steamers linking Batavia, Makassar, and Singapore. Singapore, founded in 1819, served as Wallace’s commercial and postal hub, while Dutch residencies controlled permits and movements on Java, Borneo, and the Moluccas. Local polities, including the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore, mediated access to islands and labor. The economy blended plantation agriculture, spice groves, forest products, and the burgeoning trade in natural-history specimens destined for London dealers and museums. This setting, marked by colonial bureaucracy and indigenous autonomy in outlying islands, frames Wallace’s observations on society, governance, and the distribution of life.
Dutch consolidation in the Netherlands East Indies after the Java War (1825–1830) set the political backdrop for much of Wallace’s itinerary. Governor-General Johannes van den Bosch established the Cultivation System in 1830, requiring Javanese villagers to devote a portion of their land and labor to export crops like coffee, sugar, and indigo. Revenues flowed through Batavia, making the Indies a fiscal pillar of the Dutch state by the 1840s–1850s. The Regeringsreglement of 1854 reorganized colonial administration. Wallace traveled through this regime, recording plantations on Java and contrasting tight control there with looser oversight in outer islands, observations that inform his ethnographic and economic notes.
The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 divided British and Dutch spheres in Southeast Asia, confirming Dutch dominance in the Indies and British control over the Straits Settlements. Penang, Malacca, and Singapore became the British triad, with Singapore a free port after 1819 and a communications hub for Asia by the 1850s. Regular P and O steamers tied Singapore to India and Britain via the overland Egyptian route. Wallace used Singapore to transship specimens, hire crews, and receive instructions from London. He situates his fieldwork within this treaty-shaped geography, noting how imperial boundaries, customs regimes, and shipping schedules structured access to islands and markets.
The centuries-old spice economy of the Moluccas remained a living history in Wallace’s time. The VOC had enforced clove and nutmeg monopolies in the 17th–18th centuries, subordinating the sultanates of Ternate and Tidore and relocating cultivation to controlled sites. After the VOC’s dissolution in 1799, Dutch rule continued, but by the mid-19th century the monopoly had loosened and global competition reduced prices. Wallace’s base at Ternate placed him inside this world of cloves, sultans’ courts, and long-distance traders. He documents clove groves, colonial depots, and local authority structures, showing how the lingering spice regime affected labor, transport, and scientific collecting throughout the archipelago.
James Brooke’s ascension as Rajah of Sarawak in 1841, recognized over time by Western powers, reshaped northwestern Borneo’s politics. Through alliances with the Sultan of Brunei and British naval support, Brooke pursued anti-piracy campaigns in the 1840s and built a small but assertive administration at Kuching. This governance increased safety for traders and travelers along the Sarawak and Sadong rivers. Wallace stayed in Sarawak in 1855, hunting orangutans and composing his influential paper now known as the Sarawak Law. The book reflects the relative openness of Brooke’s realm, contrasting Sarawak’s regulated corridors to the more precarious territories farther along Borneo’s coasts.
A mid-19th-century boom in natural-history commerce and institutional science underwrote Wallace’s enterprise. London dealers such as Samuel Stevens financed collectors who supplied European museums and private cabinets with birds, beetles, shells, and mammals. Local expertise was crucial: Malay, Dayak, and Papuan assistants, notably Wallace’s long-serving aide Ali (often referred to as Ali Wallace), trapped, skinned, and carried thousands of specimens. Commodity trades like gutta-percha extraction intersected with these circuits, as did preexisting exchanges in birds-of-paradise from the Aru–New Guinea region. The book mirrors this social economy of science, detailing prices, packing, and routes, and shows how global knowledge depended on indigenous labor and maritime networks.
Wallace’s 1855 Sarawak paper, On the Law Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species, published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, drew on observations made under Brooke’s protection. Influenced by Charles Lyell’s geology, it proposed that new species arise near allied forms in space and time, emphasizing biogeographical pattern without providing a mechanism. The article attracted modest notice in Britain but marked Wallace’s move from collector to theorist. The Malay Archipelago revisits the circumstances of its composition, showing how Bornean field experience, faunal sequences, and fossil-temporal analogies compelled a search for a dynamic explanation of species change.
In early 1858, sick with fever on Ternate, Wallace conceived natural selection and wrote On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type. He mailed the essay to Charles Darwin; Darwin received it on 18 June 1858. Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker arranged a joint presentation at the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, combining extracts of Darwin’s earlier writings with Wallace’s paper. Published on 20 August 1858, the communication sparked a new phase in evolutionary debate. Wallace’s book, framed by chapters on Ternate, Halmahera, and neighboring islands, anchors this intellectual breakthrough in the logistical realities and biotas that inspired it.
The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in November 1859 and ensuing controversies, including the widely noted 1860 Oxford meeting, set the intellectual climate in which The Malay Archipelago appeared in 1869. While Darwin elaborated a general theory, Wallace supplied richly evidenced regional case studies, mapping variation across island arcs. He addressed critics by pairing natural selection with precise distributional data, echoing discussions with British colleagues such as Hooker and Lyell and correspondents like Asa Gray. The book functions as a field-based supplement to the evolution debate, showing how painstaking collection, local travel, and comparative island faunas supported a mechanistic account of species formation.
Wallace’s delineation of a major faunal boundary now known as Wallace’s Line is a core historical contribution. Tracing a deep-water divide between Bali and Lombok and between Borneo and Sulawesi, he showed that Asian mammals and birds fade abruptly eastward, while Australasian forms—cockatoos, birds-of-paradise, marsupials—appear beyond. Later discussed by T. H. Huxley (1868) and refined by Weber and Lydekker, the line reflected ancient continental shelves separated by deep straits. The book’s island-by-island tallies, especially across Lombok Strait and the Makassar Strait, historicize this scientific event. It ties a now-classic biogeographical insight to 1850s navigation, monsoon timing, and constraints of local transport.
Mid-century maritime insecurity in northern Borneo and the Sulu Sea shaped travel and administration. Iranun and Balangingi raiders, operating swift prahus, menaced coasts through the 1840s, prompting British, Dutch, and Spanish campaigns, including the Spanish assault on Balanguingui in 1848 and subsequent expeditions into the 1860s. James Brooke collaborated with British naval officers to suppress raids along Sarawak. Wallace’s routes around Borneo and the Moluccas relied on convoys, local pilots, and careful seasonality to avoid danger. His narratives of coastal villages, armed escorts, and sudden diversions connect specimen collecting and ethnography to a wider regional history of anti-piracy warfare and state consolidation.
The Chinese diaspora’s commercial expansion underpinned mining and trade nodes encountered by Wallace. Tin extraction on Bangka and Belitung operated under Dutch oversight with large Chinese labor forces, while in West Borneo Hakka kongsi federations, including the Lanfang Republic (founded 1777), managed gold mining and local governance until Dutch suppression later in the century. Mid-19th-century tensions and reorganizations constrained kongsi autonomy. Wallace observed Chinese settlements in Singapore, Pontianak, and coastal Borneo, noting shop networks, river transport, and provisioning crucial to expeditions. The book thus reflects a social landscape in which Chinese entrepreneurs, Malay rulers, and colonial officials negotiated labor, taxation, and access to interior resources.
Dutch expansion into Bali through wars in 1846, 1848, and 1849 curtailed the island’s autonomy, justified by disputes over tawan karang salvage rights and regional trade. After the 1849 campaign and the fall of Buleleng, Dutch suzerainty deepened, though Lombok remained under Balinese rulers until 1894. Wallace crossed the Bali–Lombok gateway in the 1850s and observed a striking faunal break, later integral to Wallace’s Line. He also encountered the political legacies of recent wars in customs checks, garrisons, and shifting port controls. The book links imperial pacification to scientific travel, showing how military outcomes opened routes while also remaking indigenous authority.
Labor regimes and emancipation policies formed a crucial social backdrop. The Cultivation System imposed corvée and compulsory crops on Java into the 1860s, while slavery persisted in parts of the archipelago until Dutch abolition in the East Indies in 1860, with gradual enforcement. In Sarawak, Brooke moved to restrict slave trading and reduce bondage during the 1840s–1850s. Coolie contracts bound migrants in plantations and mines under penal sanctions. Wallace describes debt-bondage networks in eastern islands and the barter economy around birds-of-paradise, sago, and trepang. His accounts reveal how coerced and semi-coerced labor, alongside trade monopolies, structured production, mobility, and access to scientific materials.
The book operates as a subtle social and political critique by juxtaposing imperial claims of order with the lived realities of coerced labor, monopolies, and administrative unevenness. Wallace records the efficiency of Dutch tax extraction on Java but highlights hardships under forced cultivation and the comparative autonomy in outer islands where local chiefs and sultans retained leverage. He credits Malay pilots, Dayak hunters, and Papuan guides as authoritative knowledge holders, challenging racial hierarchies implicit in colonial discourse. By foregrounding practical reliance on indigenous expertise, he exposes the dependency of European science and governance on local systems that imperial narratives often minimized.
Wallace also interrogates the economics of extraction and the ethics of collection. He details price-setting by metropolitan dealers, the hazards borne by local assistants, and the distortions created by monopolies in spices, gutta-percha, and prestige commodities like birds-of-paradise. Commentary on piracy suppression and Brooke’s campaigns recognizes security gains while noting collateral disruptions to coastal societies. Observations on Chinese kongsi governance and Dutch interventions illuminate contested sovereignties and class divides within colonialism. The cumulative portrait criticizes policies that prized revenue over welfare, advocates careful, place-based governance, and links scientific generalizations to social reform, presenting natural history as a lens on injustice and administrative responsibility.
Author Biography
Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, and writer who lived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known as the independent co-discoverer of natural selection and as a founder of biogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of species. Through extensive fieldwork in South America and the Malay Archipelago, he assembled evidence that helped explain how species change and diversify. Wallace also became a public intellectual, publishing influential books that combined careful observation with broad theoretical insight. His career spanned natural history, evolutionary theory, and social commentary, making him one of the era’s most versatile scientific voices and a lasting figure in modern biology.
Wallace’s formal schooling ended relatively early, and he trained as a surveyor, a profession that attuned him to landscape, mapping, and the practical study of nature. He educated himself through voracious reading and participation in scientific and literary societies, an environment in which popular works of geology and natural history encouraged ambitious comparative thinking. He was strongly influenced by Charles Lyell’s geological principles, the anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and accounts of scientific travel, including Alexander von Humboldt’s writings. A friendship with the young naturalist Henry Walter Bates reinforced his desire to test broad ideas in the field through systematic collecting and careful observation.
In the late 1840s Wallace and Bates set out for the Amazon basin to collect natural history specimens and to study the distribution of species. Wallace traveled extensively along major tributaries, including the Rio Negro, documenting fauna, flora, and geographic patterns. A significant portion of his collections and notes was lost when a homeward-bound ship caught fire, a setback that forced him to rely on memory and surviving materials. Nonetheless, he produced A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, which reported his observations and methods. The Amazon years sharpened his attention to how related species replace one another over space, a theme that would anchor his later theoretical contributions.
Wallace’s most celebrated fieldwork occurred in the Malay Archipelago during the mid-nineteenth century. There he amassed tens of thousands of specimens and recognized a striking faunal boundary between Asian and Australasian forms, later known as the Wallace Line. While ill with fever in the Moluccas, he conceived a mechanism by which species adapt and diverge through the differential survival of variants—natural selection. He outlined the idea in an essay he sent to Charles Darwin, prompting their joint presentation to the Linnean Society. Wallace continued collecting and synthesizing data across the archipelago, producing a formidable empirical foundation for evolutionary theory and comparative biogeography.
Returning to Britain, Wallace turned field experience into influential books and papers. The Malay Archipelago became a classic of scientific travel writing as well as a rich source of evolutionary insight. Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Island Life, and Darwinism elaborated his views on evolution, adaptation, and the role of geography in shaping life. He emphasized the explanatory power of natural selection while also advancing ideas such as reinforcement of reproductive isolation, later termed the Wallace effect. Colleagues praised his integrative approach, which combined meticulous specimen data with clear argumentation, helping to establish biogeography as a central evolutionary discipline.
Wallace’s intellectual range extended beyond natural history into public debates. He became a committed spiritualist and argued that certain human mental capacities might not be fully explained by natural selection alone, a position that distinguished his account of human evolution from Darwin’s. He also advocated social reforms, including land nationalization and critiques of concentrated wealth, and he engaged in controversies over public health policy. These positions, whatever their reception, reflected a consistent ethical concern for equity and a belief in evidence-based inquiry. His scientific writings remained grounded in observation, even as his philosophical and social views broadened the scope of his public influence.
In his later years Wallace was widely recognized for his scientific achievements and received high honors, including the Order of Merit in the early twentieth century. He continued to write on science and society, producing works such as The Wonderful Century alongside technical studies. Wallace died in the early 1910s, by then acknowledged as a central figure in evolutionary biology. His legacy endures in the Wallace Line, the concept of Wallacea, and the ongoing relevance of his books to biogeography, speciation, and field-based natural history. Today he is read as a careful observer and bold theorist whose work complements and enriches the Darwinian tradition.
The Malay Archipelago (Vol. 1&2)
VOLUME 1
Table of Contents
PREFACE.
My readers will naturally ask why I have delayed writing this book for six years after my return; and I feel bound to give them full satisfaction on this point.
When I reached England in the spring of 1862, I found myself surrounded by a room full of packing cases containing the collections that I had, from time to time, sent home for my private use. These comprised nearly three thousand bird-skins of about one thousand species, at least twenty thousand beetles and butterflies of about seven thousand species, and some quadrupeds and land shells besides. A large proportion of these I had not seen for years, and in my then weakened state of health, the unpacking, sorting, and arranging of such a mass of specimens occupied a long time.
I very soon decided that until I had done something towards naming and describing the most important groups in my collection, and had worked out some of the more interesting problems of variation and geographical distribution (of which I had had glimpses while collecting them), I would not attempt to publish my travels. Indeed, I could have printed my notes and journals at once, leaving all reference to questions of natural history for a future work; but, I felt that this would be as unsatisfactory to myself as it would be disappointing to my friends, and uninstructive to the public.
Since my return, up to this date, I have published eighteen papers in the "Transactions" or "Proceedings of the Linnean Zoological and Entomological Societies", describing or cataloguing portions of my collections, along with twelve others in various scientific periodicals on more general subjects connected with them.
Nearly two thousand of my Coleoptera, and many hundreds of my butterflies, have been already described by various eminent naturalists, British and foreign; but a much larger number remains undescribed. Among those to whom science is most indebted for this laborious work, I must name Mr. F. P. Pascoe, late President of the Entomological Society of London, who had almost completed the classification and description of my large collection of Longicorn beetles (now in his possession), comprising more than a thousand species, of which at least nine hundred were previously undescribed and new to European cabinets.
The remaining orders of insects, comprising probably more than two thousand species, are in the collection of Mr. William Wilson Saunders, who has caused the larger portion of them to be described by good entomologists. The Hymenoptera alone amounted to more than nine hundred species, among which were two hundred and eighty different kinds of ants, of which two hundred were new.
The six years' delay in publishing my travels thus enables me to give what I hope may be an interesting and instructive sketch of the main results yet arrived at by the study of my collections; and as the countries I have to describe are not much visited or written about, and their social and physical conditions are not liable to rapid change, I believe and hope that my readers will gain much more than they will lose by not having read my book six years ago, and by this time perhaps forgotten all about it.
I must now say a few words on the plan of my work.
My journeys to the various islands were regulated by the seasons and the means of conveyance. I visited some islands two or three times at distant intervals, and in some cases had to make the same voyage four times over. A chronological arrangement would have puzzled my readers. They would never have known where they were, and my frequent references to the groups of islands, classed in accordance with the peculiarities of their animal productions and of their human inhabitants, would have been hardly intelligible. I have adopted, therefore, a geographical, zoological, and ethnological arrangement, passing from island to island in what seems the most natural succession, while I transgress the order in which I myself visited them, as little as possible.
I divide the Archipelago into five groups of islands, as follows:
I. THE INDO-MALAY ISLANDS: comprising the Malay Peninsula and Singapore, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra.
II. THE TIMOR GROUP: comprising the islands of Timor, Flores, Sumbawa, and Lombock, with several smaller ones.
III. CELEBES: comprising also the Sula Islands and Bouton.
IV. THE MOLUCCAN GROUP: comprising Bouru, Ceram, Batchian, Gilolo, and Morty; with the smaller islands of Ternate, Tidore, Makian, Kaióa, Amboyna, Banda, Goram, and Matabello.
V. THE PAPUAN GROUP: comprising the great island of New Guinea, with the Aru Islands, Mysol, Salwatty, Waigiou, and several others. The Ke Islands are described with this group on account of their ethnology, though zoologically and geographically they belong to the Moluccas.
The chapters relating to the separate islands of each of these groups are followed by one on the Natural History of that group; and the work may thus be divided into five parts, each treating one of the natural divisions of the Archipelago.
The first chapter is an introductory one, on the Physical Geography of the whole region; and the last is a general sketch of the races of man in the Archipelago and the surrounding countries. With this explanation, and a reference to the maps which illustrate the work, I trust that my readers will always know where they are, and in what direction they are going.
I am well aware that my book is far too small for the extent of the subjects it touches upon. It is a mere sketch; but so far as it goes, I have endeavoured to make it an accurate one. Almost the whole of the narrative and descriptive portions were written on the spot, and have had little more than verbal alterations. The chapters on Natural History, as well as many passages in other parts of the work, have been written in the hope of exciting an interest in the various questions connected with the origin of species and their geographical distribution. In some cases I have been able to explain my views in detail; while in others, owing to the greater complexity of the subject, I have thought it better to confine myself to a statement of the more interesting facts of the problem, whose solution is to be found in the principles developed by Mr. Darwin in his various works. The numerous illustrations will, it is believed, add much to the interest and value of the book. They have been made from my own sketches, from photographs, or from specimens—and such, only subjects that would really illustrate the narrative or the descriptions, have been chosen.
I have to thank Messrs. Walter and Henry Woodbury, whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of making in Java, for a number of photographs of scenery and of natives, which have been of the greatest assistance to me. Mr. William Wilson Saunders has kindly allowed me to figure the curious horned flies; and to Mr. Pascoe I am indebted for a loan of two of the very rare Longicorns which appear in the plate of Bornean beetles. All the other specimens figured are in my own collection.
As the main object of all my journeys was to obtain specimens of natural history, both for my private collection and to supply duplicates to museums and amateurs, I will give a general statement of the number of specimens I collected, and which reached home in good condition. I must premise that I generally employed one or two, and sometimes three Malay servants to assist me; and for nearly half the time had the services of an English lad, Charles Allen. I was just eight years away from England, but as I travelled about fourteen thousand miles within the Archipelago, and made sixty or seventy separate journeys, each involving some preparation and loss of time, I do not think that more than six years were really occupied in collecting.
I find that my Eastern collections amounted to:
310 specimens of Mammalia. 100 specimens of Reptiles. 8,050 specimens of Birds. 7,500 specimens of Shells. 13,100 specimens of Lepidoptera. 83,200 specimens of Coleoptera. 13,400 specimens of other Insects. 125,660 specimens of natural history in all.
It now only remains for me to thank all those friends to whom I am indebted for assistance or information. My thanks are more especially due to the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, through whose valuable recommendations I obtained important aid from our own Government and from that of Holland; and to Mr. William Wilson Saunders, whose kind and liberal encouragement in the early portion of my journey was of great service to me. I am also greatly indebted to Mr. Samuel Stevens (who acted as my agent), both for the care he took of my collections, and for the untiring assiduity with which he kept me supplied, both with useful information and with whatever necessaries I required.
I trust that these, and all other friends who have been in any way interested in my travels and collections, may derive from the perusal of my book, some faint reflexion of the pleasures I myself enjoyed amid the scenes and objects it describes.
CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.
From a look at a globe or a map of the Eastern hemisphere, we shall perceive between Asia and Australia a number of large and small islands forming a connected group distinct from those great masses of land, and having little connection with either of them. Situated upon the Equator, and bathed by the tepid water of the great tropical oceans, this region enjoys a climate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any other part of the globe,[1q] and teems with natural productions which are elsewhere unknown. The richest of fruits and the most precious of spices are Indigenous here. It produces the giant flowers of the Rafflesia, the great green-winged Ornithoptera (princes among the butterfly tribes), the man-like Orangutan, and the gorgeous Birds of Paradise. It is inhabited by a peculiar and interesting race of mankind—the Malay, 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 it; 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 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 differ widely in their natural products, and really form two parts 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 the main features of the Malayan region as will render the facts hereafter brought forward more interesting, and their bearing upon 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, physical 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 Nicobar Islands on the west, the Philippines on the north, and the Solomon Islands, beyond New Guinea, on the east. All the great islands included within these limits are connected together by innumerable smaller ones, so that no one of them seems to be distinctly separated from the rest. With but few exceptions all enjoy an uniform and very similar climate, and are covered with a luxuriant forest vegetation. Whether we study their form and distribution on maps, or actually travel from island to island, our first impression will be that they form a connected whole, all the parts of which are intimately related to each other.
Extent of the Archipelago and Islands.—The Malay Archipelago extends for more than 4,000 miles in length from east to west, and is about 1,300 in breadth from north to south. It would stretch over an expanse equal to that of all Europe from the extreme west far into Central Asia, or would cover the widest parts of South America, and extend far beyond the land into the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It includes three islands larger than Great Britain; and in one of them, Borneo, the whole of the British Isles might be set down, and would be surrounded by a sea of forests. New Guinea, though less compact in shape, is probably larger than Borneo. Sumatra is about equal in extent to Great Britain; Java, Luzon, and Celebes are each about the size of Ireland. Eighteen more islands are, on the average, as large as Jamaica; more than a hundred are as large as the Isle of Wight; while the isles and islets of smaller size are innumerable.
The absolute extent of land in the Archipelago is not greater than that contained by Western Europe from Hungary to Spain; but, owing to the manner in which the land is broken up and divided, the variety of its productions is rather in proportion to the immense surface over which the islands are spread, than to the quantity of land which they contain.
Geological Contrasts.—One of the chief volcanic belts upon the globe passes through the Archipelago, and produces a striking contrast in the scenery of the volcanic and non-volcanic islands. A curving line, marked out by scores of active, and hundreds of extinct, volcanoes may be traced through the whole length of Sumatra and Java, and thence by the islands of Bali, Lombock, Sumbawa, Flores, the Serwatty Islands, Banda, Amboyna, Batchian, Makian, Tidore, Ternate, and Gilolo, to Morty Island. Here there is a slight but well-marked break, or shift, of about 200 miles to the westward, where the volcanic belt begins again in North Celebes, and passes by Siau and Sanguir to the Philippine Islands along the eastern side of which it continues, in a curving line, to their northern extremity. From the extreme eastern bend of this belt at Banda, we pass onwards for 1,000 miles over a non-volcanic district to the volcanoes observed by Dampier, in 1699, on the north-eastern coast of New Guinea, and can there trace another volcanic belt through New Britain, New Ireland, and the Solomon Islands, to the eastern limits of the Archipelago.
In the whole region occupied by this vast line of volcanoes, and for a considerable breadth on each side of it, earthquakes are of continual recurrence, slight shocks being felt at intervals of every few weeks or months, while more severe ones, shaking down whole villages, and doing more or less injury to life and property, are sure to happen, in one part or another of this district, almost every year. On many of the islands the years of the great earthquakes form the chronological epochs of the native inhabitants, by the aid of which the ages of their children are remembered, and the dates of many important events are determined.
I can only briefly allude to the many fearful eruptions that have taken place in this region. In the amount of injury to life and property, and in the magnitude of their effects, they have not been surpassed by any upon record. Forty villages were destroyed by the eruption of Papandayang in Java, in 1772, when the whole mountain was blown up by repeated explosions, and a large lake left in its place. By the great eruption of Tomboro in Sumbawa, in 1815, 12,000 people were destroyed, and the ashes darkened the air and fell thickly upon the earth and sea for 300 miles around. Even quite recently, since I left the country, a mountain which had been quiescent for more than 200 years suddenly burst into activity. The island of Makian, one of the Moluccas, was rent open in 1646 by a violent eruption which left a huge chasm on one side, extending into the heart of the mountain. It was, when I last visited it in 1860, clothed with vegetation to the summit, and contained twelve populous Malay villages. On the 29th of December, 1862, after 215 years of perfect inaction, it again suddenly burst forth, blowing up and completely altering the appearance of the mountain, destroying the greater part of the inhabitants, and sending forth such volumes of ashes as to darken the air at Ternate, forty miles off, and to almost entirely destroy the growing crops on that and the surrounding islands.
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.
It is now well ascertained that almost all volcanoes have been slowly built up by the accumulation of matter—mud, ashes, and lava—ejected by themselves. The openings or craters, however, frequently shift their position, so that a country may be covered with a more or less irregular series of hills in chains and masses, only here and there rising into lofty cones, and yet the whole may be produced by true volcanic action. In this manner the greater part of Java has been formed. There has been some elevation, especially on the south coast, where extensive cliffs of coral limestone are found; and there may be a substratum of older stratified rocks; but still essentially Java is volcanic, and that noble and fertile island—the very garden of the East, and perhaps upon the whole the richest, the best cultivated, and the best governed tropical island in the world—owes its very existence to the same intense volcanic activity which still occasionally devastates its surface.
The great island of Sumatra exhibits, in proportion to its extent, a much smaller number of volcanoes, and a considerable portion of it has probably a non-volcanic origin.
To the eastward, the long string of islands from Java, passing by the north of Timor and away to Banda, are probably all due to volcanic action. Timor itself consists of ancient stratified rocks, but is said to have one volcano near its centre.
Going northward, Amboyna, a part of Bouru, and the west end of Ceram, the north part of Gilolo, and all the small islands around it, the northern extremity of Celebes, and the islands of Siau and Sanguir, are wholly volcanic. The Philippine Archipelago contains many active and extinct volcanoes, and has probably been reduced to its present fragmentary condition by subsidences attending on volcanic action.
All along this great line of volcanoes are to be found more or less palpable signs of upheaval and depression of land. The range of islands south of Sumatra, a part of the south coast of Java and of the islands east of it, the west and east end of Timor, portions of all the Moluccas, the Ke and Aru Islands, Waigiou, and the whole south and east of Gilolo, consist in a great measure of upraised coral-rock, exactly corresponding to that now forming in the adjacent seas. In many places I have observed the unaltered surfaces of the elevated reefs, with great masses of coral standing up in their natural position, and hundreds of shells so fresh-looking that it was hard to believe that they had been more than a few years out of the water; and, in fact, it is very probable that such changes have occurred within a few centuries.
The united lengths of these volcanic belts is about ninety degrees, or one-fourth of the entire circumference of the globe. Their width is about fifty miles; but, for a space of two hundred miles on each side of them, evidences of subterranean action are to be found in recently elevated coral-rock, or in barrier coral-reefs, indicating recent submergence. In the very centre or focus of the great curve of volcanoes is placed the large island of Borneo, in which no sign of recent volcanic action has yet been observed, and where earthquakes, so characteristic of the surrounding regions, are entirely unknown. The equally large island of New Guinea occupies another quiescent area, on which no sign of volcanic action has yet been discovered. With the exception of the eastern end of its northern peninsula, the large and curiously-shaped island of Celebes is also entirely free from volcanoes; and there is some reason to believe that the volcanic portion has once formed a separate island. The Malay Peninsula is also non-volcanic.
The first and most obvious division of the Archipelago would therefore be into quiescent and volcanic regions, and it might, perhaps, be expected that such a division would correspond to some differences in the character of the vegetation and the forms of life. This is the case, however, to a very limited extent; and we shall presently see that, although this development of subterranean fires is on so vast a scale—has piled up chains of mountains ten or twelve thousand feet high—has broken up continents and raised up islands from the ocean—yet it has all the character of a recent action which has not yet succeeded in obliterating the traces of a more ancient distribution of land and water.
Contrasts of Vegetation.—Placed immediately upon the Equator and surrounded by extensive oceans, it is not surprising that the various islands of the Archipelago should be almost always clothed with a forest vegetation from the level of the sea to the summits of the loftiest mountains. This is the general rule. Sumatra, New Guinea, Borneo, the Philippines and the Moluccas, and the uncultivated parts of Java and Celebes, are all forest countries, except a few small and unimportant tracts, due perhaps, in some cases, to ancient cultivation or accidental fires. To this, however, there is one important exception 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, also 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 and the Ke Islands, a moister climate prevails; the southeast 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, until 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 Royal 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 the islands, which shall so divide them that one-half shall truly belong to Asia, while the other shall no less certainly be allied to Australia. I term these respectively the Indo-Malayan and the Austro-Malayan divisions of the Archipelago.
On referring to pages 12, 13, and 36 of Mr. Earl's pamphlet, it will be seen that he maintains the former connection of Asia and Australia as an important part of his view; whereas, I dwell mainly on their long continued separation. Notwithstanding this and other important differences between us, to him undoubtedly belongs the merit of first indicating the division of the Archipelago into an Australian and an Asiatic region, which it has been my good fortune to establish by more detailed observations.
Contrasts in Natural Productions.—To understand the importance of this class of facts, and its bearing upon the former distribution of land and sea, it is necessary to consider the results arrived at by geologists and naturalists in other parts of the world.
It is now generally admitted that the present distribution of living things on the surface of the earth is mainly the result of the last series of changes that it has undergone. Geology teaches us that the surface of the land, and the distribution of land and water, is everywhere slowly changing. It further teaches us that the forms of life which inhabit that surface have, during every period of which we possess any record, been also slowly changing.
It is not now necessary to say anything about how either of those changes took place; as to that, opinions may differ; but as to the fact that the changes themselves have occurred, from the earliest geological ages down to the present day, and are still going on, there is no difference of opinion. Every successive stratum of sedimentary rock, sand, or gravel, is a proof that changes of level have taken place; and the different species of animals and plants, whose remains are found in these deposits, prove that corresponding changes did occur in the organic world.
Taking, therefore, these two series of changes for granted, most of the present peculiarities and anomalies in the distribution of species may be directly traced to them. In our own islands, with a very few trifling exceptions, every quadruped, bird, reptile, insect, and plant, is found also on the adjacent continent. In the small islands of Sardinia and Corsica, there are some quadrupeds and insects, and many plants, quite peculiar. In Ceylon, more closely connected to India than Britain is to Europe, many animals and plants are different from those found in India, and peculiar to the island. In the Galapagos Islands, almost every indigenous living thing is peculiar to them, though closely resembling other kinds found in the nearest parts of the American continent.
Most naturalists now admit that these facts can only be explained by the greater or less lapse of time since the islands were upraised from beneath the ocean, or were separated from the nearest land; and this will be generally (though not always) indicated by the depth of the intervening sea. The enormous thickness of many marine deposits through wide areas shows that subsidence has often continued (with intermitting periods of repose) during epochs of immense duration. The depth of sea produced by such subsidence will therefore generally be a measure of time; and in like manner, the change which organic forms have undergone is a measure of time. When we make proper allowance for the continued introduction of new animals and plants from surrounding countries by those natural means of dispersal which have been so well explained by Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Darwin, it is remarkable how closely these two measures correspond. Britain is separated from the continent by a very shallow sea, and only in a very few cases have our animals or plants begun to show a difference from the corresponding continental species. Corsica and Sardinia, divided from Italy by a much deeper sea, present a much greater difference in their organic forms. Cuba, separated from Yucatan by a wider and deeper strait, differs more markedly, so that most of its productions are of distinct and peculiar species; while Madagascar, divided from Africa by a deep channel three hundred miles wide, possesses so many peculiar features as to indicate separation at a very remote antiquity, or even to render it doubtful whether the two countries have ever been absolutely united.
Returning now to the Malay Archipelago, we find that all the wide expanse of sea which divides Java, Sumatra, and Borneo from each other, and from Malacca and Siam, is so shallow that ships can anchor in any part of it, since it rarely exceeds forty fathoms in depth; and if we go as far as the line of a hundred fathoms, we shall include the Philippine Islands and Bali, east of Java. If, therefore, these islands have been separated from each other and the continent by subsidence of the intervening tracts of land, we should conclude that the separation has been comparatively recent, since the depth to which the land has subsided is so small. It is also to be remarked that the great chain of active volcanoes in Sumatra and Java furnishes us with a sufficient cause for such subsidence, since the enormous masses of matter they have thrown out would take away the foundations of the surrounding district; and this may be the true explanation of the often-noticed fact that volcanoes and volcanic chains are always near the sea. The subsidence they produce around them will, in time, make a sea, if one does not already exist.
