1847.] including Notices of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, fyc. 527 



are composed from their previous horizontal bed to their present inclin- 

 ed position, we are met by the fact that the superficial deposits are not 

 in layers conformable to these strata, but are spread over their uplifted 

 edges. If again, it be supposed that the hills were formed under water, 

 and that after the accumulation of the gravel, &c. upon them, the plat- 

 form from which they rise was elevated so as to cause them to emerge 

 from the sea, we are met by other insuperable objections. Of these it 

 is only here necessary to specify one, although looking to single limited 

 localities the gravel deposits appear to be regularly disposed like beds 

 derived from currents ; when we compare one hill with another we 

 observe far too much irregularity to allow this idea to be tenable. 



2. — Diluvial Hypothesis. 



As we extend our observations this irregularity is seen to be so 

 great that we are irresistibly led to conjecture that its causes were dilu- 

 vial instead of alluvial. In many places rock fragments of all sizes are 

 confusedly intermixed with loose clay or sand, so that if due to aqueous 

 action it must have been of an extraordinary and violent nature thus to 

 have borne along rapidly masses of matter containing large blocks, and 

 deposited them in such confusion, and that often on the summits of 

 hills. A continued diluvial action of variable force might also account 

 for the large quantities of rounded pebbly-looking stones, and the broad 

 thin beds of smaller gravel-like stones that occur. Closer investigation 

 however seems to discover an unanswerable argument against a diluvial 

 theory in the fact that the larger rock fragments, and even the gravel, 

 differ in different localities, often even when these adjoin each other, 

 and that it has always been found that they have a certain correspond- 

 ence with, or relation to, the subjacent rocks where these have been 

 exposed. No decided boulder or drift has yet been noticed. 



Colonel Low appears to have considered the scoriaceous, ferruginous 

 rocks as boulders, but he gives no reason for this opinion. The gravel 

 he refers to the concretionary tendency of soils impregnated with iron. 

 I need not stop here to remark upon these evidently hastily formed 

 views.* 



* I cannot mention Colonel Low, during" so many years of official toil, almost the soli- 

 tary votary of science and oriental literature in the Straits Settlements, without expressing 

 the hope that he will not long withhold from this Journal the fruits of his present 

 " learned leisure." 



3 z 



