AND GEOLOGY OF THE MALAY PENINSULA. 
tat or; with the belief that they are remnants, often mere patches, of 
the former stratified crust of the Peninsular zone, scattered integer 
It still exists converted into platonic and volcanic rock. Of such conver¬ 
sion there is much evidence both positive and circumstantial. Of denuda¬ 
tion adequate to explain the phenomena there is none. We have not thought 
it advisable to introduce into the text of a paper like the present an asser¬ 
tion of a view which many geologists may consider inconsistent with theories 
which they maintain. But we subjoin two general statements of it from 
the introduction and appendix to the paper before cited, premising that the 
present paper will be followed, when room can he made for them, by des¬ 
criptions of the rocks of Malacca, Singapore and the kingdom of Johore ge¬ 
nerally, which will place before geological readers many of the facts on which 
this view is based, 
“The disturbed sedimentary rocks were re-examined free from the bias of 
that theory,* and it then appeared, that, while the evidence in favour of the 
metamorphic origin of the laterites, &c., was so strong and varied that it 
might he now recorded as a demonstrated fact; there were no apparent ob¬ 
stacles to the reception of the simple hypothesis that they were caused by 
plutonic agency, and thatthe plutonic rocks of the districts were themselves 
the agents of the alteration, or the effects of one and the same hypogene agen¬ 
cy. This hypothesis embraces at once the whole region of elevation in which 
Singapore is situated, with all the plutonic, volcanic and metamorphic phe¬ 
nomena which it exhibits. Jtrefers the whole to one cause operating through¬ 
out a long period of time, and which has not yet entirely ceased to operate, 
as the volcanic emissions of Sumatra and the vibrations of the whole region, 
from time to time, and the thermal springs of Sumatra and the Peninsula, 
constantly, testify to us. This cause is the existence of an internal plutonic 
intumescence, or nucleus, which has slowly swollen up, fracturing the sedi¬ 
mentary strata, saturating and seaming them with its exhalations, and as it 
forced itself up beneath them and through the gorges and fissures, at once 
upheaving them and feeding on their substance, till, in many places, it 
pressed and eat through them to the refrigerating surface, and rose, con¬ 
gealing, into the air or sea. It is this latter circumstance that distinguishes 
the region from alt those which have been observed by European geologists, 
and it is this singularly high level which the plutonic reduction has reached 
that explains the extraordinary appearances which the unreduced superficial 
rocks have so often assumed. The metamorphosed rocks ofEurope evin¬ 
ced a deep subterranean saturation with plutonic exhalations, and European 
geologists concluded that plutonic action was necessarily deeply subterra¬ 
neous. But here, I think, we find a subacrial or subaqueous plutonic acti¬ 
vity ; and, where the plutonic level has not reached that of the pre-existing 
rocks, a new kind of metamorphism appropriate to the new conditions un¬ 
der which the plutonic exhalations have operated.” 
“The whole region has been subjected to plutonic reduction. The plutonic 
fluid by its pressure has caused fractures in approximative N.W...S.E. 
lines, and it has swollen up in ramifying bandshaving that general direction. 
Its pressure and heathave varied at different portions of its surface. In some 
places the heat has been so intense as to reduce all the superincumbent rock up 
to the very surface into its own substance, and it has swollen up in moun¬ 
tains in the interior and hills in the exterior lateritic tracts of the Peninsula. 
The transformed and partially transformed sedimentary hill ranges rest, 
* The theory that granites <$?c. can only be produced at deeply subterra¬ 
nean levels, and under vast pressure. Throughout this paper in using the 
word plutonie, we merely intend that the producing forces, and the rocks 
produced ; originated from beneath. 
o 
