xists 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
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