is tiny Norfolk Island between New Caledonia and New Zealand. The southern island of New Zealand is, like New Caledonia, a portion of an ancient continent which has never been submerged; and the north island of that dominion is a very volcanic region.

The volcanic islands of the Pacific are always of more importance than the coral, partly because they are larger, but still more on account of their singularly fertile soil, high peaks, good rainfall, and picturesque scenery. They are, in fact, the "summer isles of Eden, set in dark purple spheres of sea", of Tennyson's poem. The climate is almost invariably healthy, the temperature a perpetual summer, with a never-absent invigorating sea breeze. The only grim reminder that there is another side to Nature lies in the occasional hurricane which drives great ships on to the coral or the basalt rocks, which lays low many a dwelling and plantation, or the earthquake followed by the still more alarming tidal wave. In Hawaii there is one of the largest active volcanoes in the world, into the seething crater of which victims used to be thrown as sacrifices to the god of fire. In the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz Islands there are other volcanoes, also active and occasionally emitting great streams of molten lava. This is, or was, also the case in the little islands—mere volcanic peaks rising above the waves—that form a broken chain round the north coast of New Guinea. Here were the "burning islets" so often noted in Tasman's and Dampier's voyages. Weird was the sight of them at night—a great cone standing out of the blue-black darkness, vomiting red fiery gas and red-hot ashes, columns of dense smoke turned gold and orange by the incandescent lava bubbling up and boiling over the crater's lips, and streaming in blazing cascades down the mountain's sides. The thundering discharges of gas, the crackling of electricity, added to the terror of the scene; and yet one can realize that after a time and the passing of many such small active volcanoes the Dutch, Spanish, and English sailors became used to them, and even found the presence of a burning mountain in the dark tropic night a cheering beacon in the pathless seas.

Borneo, Celebes, Buru, Jilolo, and the Spice Islands, Timor, Ceram, the eastern Sunda Islands were, of course, with Java and Sumatra on the west, New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago on the east, and the Philippines on the north, continental islands; that is to say, fragments of the former prolongation of Asia towards Australia: old lands, large or small portions of which have always risen above the very shallow sea which now separates them from one another. Yet Malaysia, like Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia, is very volcanic. Of all its islands Borneo is the least so at the present day, in fact there is no active or recently active volcano in that huge island; whereas the Philippines are occasionally racked with earthquakes and have twelve active volcanoes. Java has a long range of lofty craters—some hundred and twenty-five in all, of which at least thirteen are active. The Lesser Sunda Islands, east of Java, likewise contain many volcanoes: Lombok and Sumbawa are little more than exceedingly large groups of craters, and when the Sumbawa volcano (of which something like 6 cubic miles was blown away) erupted in 1815, its red-hot lava and ashes killed forty thousand of the inhabitants on its slopes. There are volcanoes in Celebes, the Moluccas, Jilolo, and some of the islands off the west end of New Guinea. Timor only shows traces of past volcanic activity. In consequence of its being the most volcanic region in the world, Malaysia is very subject to earthquakes; and these disturbances of the earth's surface not only cause devastating tidal waves on the seacoasts, but in some way affect the atmosphere, provoking fearful cyclones of wind, followed by torrential rain. Similar disturbances of the atmosphere, however, occur frequently before or after the rainy season. Borneo is frightfully hot—perhaps hotter all the year round than any other country—but it is less afflicted with devastating winds. Nearly all Malaysia has a tremendous rainfall, though one or two islands, such as Flores and parts of Timor, have a rather drier climate, more suggestive of northern Australia. As a rule, however, Malaysia, in consequence of its perpetual summer under an equatorial sun, its rich alluvial soil—often of that peculiar richness associated with volcanic materials—and its plentiful rainfall, is clothed with a primeval forest which for luxuriance can scarcely be matched in West Africa or Brazil. These lands have been styled "the gardens of the sun"; "enormous forcing houses crammed with vegetation"; "great zoological gardens, full of rare and curious beasts". Here may be seen many species of palms: the gloriously beautiful Cyrtostachys palm of Java, with vividly red sheaths to the fronds and flower stalks, and bright yellow inflorescence changing to scarlet fruit; the creeping, climbing palms (the "rattan" or Calamus); stately Areca palms (which produce the betel nut, and the smaller species the "cabbage", so often described by travellers in Australia and the Pacific islands); useful Sago palms (Metroxylon); the sugar-yielding Arenga; the toddy or "rum" palm (Caryota); the Nipa, used for thatching; and, of course, the Coconut. As one travels eastward into the Pacific, this variety of palms thins out until at last only the Coconut remains on the coral islands.

Of the other far-famed trees of the Malaysian forest there is the tall Duriān, with its evil-smelling, delicious-tasting fruit; there are stately, evergreen oaks, chestnuts, and mulberries; many kinds of fig trees—some growing like the Indian Banyan, with dependent roots that reach down from the far-spreading branches and form a grove of trees in time; others that live like grey, snaky parasites writhing about the trunks of victim trees, which in time they strangle; there are giant laurels, cinnamon laurels, huge myrtles, clove myrtles with their intensely aromatic flowerbuds, caoutchouc trees producing indiarubber, nutmeg trees, with their fragrant spice which so early drew traders to the most eastern part of the Malay Archipelago; and there are trees of sweet-smelling wood like the sandalwood and the Aquilaria or eaglewood, others like the damar-attam (Hopea), which produce a valuable glass-like resin; there are two or more kinds of big-leaved Bread-fruit trees (Artocarpus), yielding their farinaceous, fig-like pods; and Artocarpi of a creeping habit whose branches are covered with small fig-like fruits remarkable for their gorgeous coloration—scarlet spotted with white, scarlet and purple, white and orange. Bamboos, often of huge girth, grow everywhere; orchids of incredible loveliness in colour and strangeness of form fringe the great boughs of the forest trees, which also afford harbourage to parasitic aroids of fantastic appearance; the glades are full of pitcher plants, ground orchids, brilliantly-coloured Cannas, "Grains-of-Paradise", calladiums with painted leaves, and wild bananas, with their beautiful, glossy, emerald-green fronds, or in some species with vividly coloured flower spikes. The marshy places are thickly grown with rushes resembling the papyrus of Africa; the shores of estuaries and low-lying coasts are the domain of tall mangroves and of the pandanus or screw pine—a semi-aquatic tree of the tropical parts of the Old World, which, with many aerial roots, and long, pointed, sword-like leaves, is distantly akin to the palms, and in Australasia produces fruit which is much eaten by the natives, especially in the Pacific Islands. These dense jungles of mangrove, pandanus, and other trees growing in the mud