ON THE STREAM TIN DEPOSITS OF PERAK 



Lectures delivered at Thaipeng, Perak, 



BY . 



The Eevd. J. E. TENISON- WOODS, F.ff.s., f.l.s.,&c. 



LECTURE I. 

 1 7th April, 1 884. 



I have here before me two pieces of stone. One, you observe, is 

 a rough fragment of granite of irregular shape : the other is a 

 rounded pebble such as you may pick up any day from the gravel 

 of a running stream. If I ask how these stones came to have their 

 respective appearance, few would hesitate for an answer. You 

 would say that one has been roughly broken off from a rocky mass : 

 and the other has been rounded in the bottom of a running stream. 

 Yet, in these opinions, simple as they are and evidently borne out 

 by the facts of the case, you have formed by the interpretation of 

 the geological record. You have acted upon a principle which, if 

 followed up, must lead to the interpretation of many of the geolo- 

 gical features upon the earth's surface. You have deciphered one 

 of the inscriptions which nature has written on the stones, that is to 

 say, the record of the way in which its forces have been exercised. 



In this respect, there is a close resemblance between the work 

 of an Archaeologist or Antiquary aud that of a Geologist. For 

 example, the antiquary finds a stone, covered all over with inscrip- 

 tions. This, he says, must have been done by a human hand. The 

 man who has cut this has known the use of metals as well as writ- 

 ing. His people had arts, and thus he draws conclusions which no 

 one will be found to dispute, which no one can dispute, as they ob- 

 viously belong to the facts of the case, however much we may 

 question theories built upon these facts. 



Precisely in a similar manner we are able to draw conclusions 

 from the inscriptions on the stones before us. The first is rough 



