Very different in climate, flora, and fauna to Malaysia and Polynesia are the great southern lands of Australia and New Zealand, together with New Caledonia and Norfolk Island. The northern, eastern, and south-western coast regions of Australia have a fairly abundant rainfall--quite as much as that which prevails in the more southerly of the Malay islands. But the centre, south, west, and north-west of Australia is much of it an almost hopeless desert, though not such a complete sandy desert as may be seen in Mongolia and northern Africa. The vegetation of this dry region of Australia consists mainly of a close-growing, spiny-seeded grass--the celebrated _Spinifex_. There are also gouty-looking Baobab trees like those of Tropical Africa. In New Guinea, where the rich flora contains not a few Australian elements, there are mountains rising considerably above the line of perpetual snow[6] both in the south-east and west, and many of the volcanoes, active and extinct, of Malaysia attain altitudes of over ten and eleven thousand feet. There are mountains nearly as lofty in the Solomon Islands, while in New Zealand we have the superb Southern Alps (12,349 feet at their highest), which give a magnificent display of snow peaks and glaciers. But much of Australia is flat and undulating, and the highest mountain in that continent is only 7328 feet. Another thing which marks off Australia from the rest of Australasia is the complete absence of active volcanoes. But this is only quite a recent fact in its history, for at periods scarcely more distant than fifty thousand or sixty thousand years ago there were still volcanoes in the eastern part of the island continent vomiting out boiling lava and red-hot ashes, even after the land was inhabited by man. Still, as compared with Malaysia, Polynesia, and northern New Zealand, Australia is a very stable region, not persecuted by earthquakes or the present results of volcanic activity. [6] The New Guinea mountains are the highest in Australasia, higher than any land between the Himalayas and the Andes. They rise to over 16,000 feet in the west of New Guinea, and nearly 14,000 feet in the east. High mountains are common features on the great Malay islands. They rise to over 10,000 feet in Celebes and the Philippines, to 13,700 feet in North Borneo, and to altitudes of over 11,000 feet in Java and nearly as high in Timor.