Island
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Island. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
i'land, a body of land surrounded by water. A island differs from a continent only in size. Now that Australia is regarded as a continent, Greenland, with an area of 500,000 square miles, is the largest island. Borneo, New Guinea , and Madagascar rank next. Great Britain is sixth in size; Cuba, thirteenth; Newfoundland, twelfth; Iceland, fifteenth; Ireland eighteenth. Islands are classified usually as continental and oceanic. The former fringe the continents and are geologically connected with them. They are separated from the mainland usually by shallow seas. Save Iceland, all the islands named above are continental in origin. Continental islands are found to have the same animals and plants as the mainland of which they have formed a part. They contain rocks like granite and limestone. Oceanic islands are usually the summits of submarine volcanic islands. Their rocks are basaltic, formed of cooled lava. St. Helena, the Fiji Islands, Iceland, Stromboli, and the Hawaiian Islands are of this sort. Many low, flat islands prove to be of coral growth. They are coral reefs growing on a firm base that comes to within not less than twenty fathoms from the surface. Not infrequently flat islands are formed off the mouth of rivers by material carried down by the current and tossed back by the waves and tide. Omitting the little known bodies of ice and land north of Hudson Bay , and the Antarctic land and ice polar cap, the following is a list of important islands and area of each in square miles: Greenland 500,000 Borneo 309,343 New Guinea 275,329 Madagascar 227,750 Sumatra 161,612 Great Britain 88,094 Honshu (Japan) 87,485 New Zealand , South Island 58,525 Java 50,554 Celebes 49,390 New Zealand, North Island 44,468 Newfoundland 42,200 Cuba 41,655 Luzon 40,969 Iceland 39,756 Hokkaido (Japan) 36,299 Mindanao 36,292 Ireland 32,583 Haiti 28,250 Tasmania 26,215 Ceylon 25,333 Kiushiu (Japan) 16,840 Formosa 13,458 Sicily 9,936 Sardinia 9,294
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a tract of land encompassed with water, whether of the sea, a river, or a lake-in contradistinction to continent or terra firma. The detached porof land separated from each other, tions and from the larger masses or continents, by water spaces more or less wide and deep, are of two very distinct kinds. Some are elongated and generally parallel to continents, others are detached, rounded, or in groups and systems in open ocean. The former are called continental, and the later pelagic. Of the continental islands of Europe, the British Islands, the islands between Italy and Spain, and those of the Grecian Archipelago, are the most important. ISLAND NO. 10, an island in the Mississippi river, at the W. extremity mity of Kentucky, on the border of Tennessee, about 40 miles below Columbus. It was captured by the Union forces under General Pope in April, 1862.