STRAITS OF, are formed by the approach of the south-east extremity of the island of Sumatra to the north-west extremity of the island of Java (See these islands, Encycl.). The straits are interposed with a number of small islands; the whole displaying a scenery scarcely to be exceeded in the softness, richness, and variety of its appearance. The two great islands, which are low, and in some places marshy near the shore, rise afterwards, in a gradual slope, towards the interior of the country, admitting in their ascent every variety of situation, and all the different tints of verdure. Of the smaller islands, a few have steep and naked sides, such as one in the middle of the strait, which the English navigators have distinguished, on that account, by the name of Thwart-the-way, and two very small round ones, called, from their figures, the Cap and Button (see these islands, Suppl.); but most of the others are entirely level, founded upon beds of coral, and covered with trees. Some of these islands are surrounded with a white sandy beach, visited frequently by turtle; but most of them are adorned with thick shrubbery to the water's edge, the roots being washed by the sea, or the branches dipping into it; and on the outside are shoals, in which a multitude of little aquatic animals are busied in framing calcareous habitations for their residence and protection. Those fabrics gradually emerge above the surface of the water, and at length, by the adventitious adhesion of vegetable matter, giving birth to plants and trees, become new islands, or add to the size of those already produced by the same means. It is impossible not to be struck with the diversified operations of Nature for obtaining the same end, whether employed in originally fixing the granite foundation of the Brazils, or in throwing up, by some sudden and subsequent convulsion, the island of Amsterdam, or in continuing to this hour, through the means of animated beings, the formation of new lands in the Straits of Sunda.—Sir George Staunton's Account of the British Embassy to China.