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James Hutton, Founder of Modern Geology (1726–1797)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Edward B. Bailey
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Extract

One hundred and fifty years ago Edinburgh lost one of her most distinguished citizens of all time, James Hutton, who is universally acclaimed as chief among the founders of modern geology. To-day, Lord Provost Sir John Falconer, to whom the city owes so much in this triumphant Festival year, has fittingly unveiled a tablet in Greyfriars Churchyard to mark the last resting-place of our great scientist. It must not be imagined that the absence of a tombstone during all these years illustrates the proverbial lack of appreciation which a prophet must expect in his own country. During his lifetime Hutton's brilliant associates recognised him at his true worth; and shortly after his death one of them, John Playfair, distinguished mathematician and physicist, erected to his friend a noble monument in the world of letters, entitled Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, 1802. He also provided the Royal Society of Edinburgh with a Biographical Account of 61 pp. 4to, 1803, which includes many personal details coupled with a comprehensive scientific appreciation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Section B: Biological Sciences , Volume 63 , Issue 4: James Hutton, 1726–1797: Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of his Death , 1949 , pp. 357 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1949

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Footnotes

*

An Address delivered before the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 3rd November 1947.

References

page 358 note * See , A. and Clow, N. L. on “James Hutton and the Manufacture of Sal Ammoniac”, Nature, CL1X, 1947, 425.Google Scholar

page 364 note * Hutton makes the case more fully in regard to carbonic acid in his Agricultural MS. than in his published Dissertation on Different Subjects in Natural Philosophy, 1792.

page 365 note * Usually called Carboniferous.

page 366 note * This paper, read in 1790, was published in 1794 in Vol. II of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Its contents are greatly expanded, along with a somewhat full description of all features of the geology of Arran, in Vol. Ill of The Theory of the Earth. The latter makes excellent reading owing to close combination of field observation and deduction. Although not published till 1899, its contents were known to Hutton's associates and played an important part in shaping current research.

page 368 note * Geikie, or more likely someone acting on his behalf, must have read the passage to which I am going to refer, for he lists it under the heading, “Ice, transport of erratics”, in his 1899 index to Vol. II of Hutton's Theory of the Earth. I do not think it was Geikie himself, for he says in his Founders of Geology, edit, ii, 1905, p. 314: “To the Huttonian School belongs also the conspicuous merit of having been the first to recognise the potency of glaciers in the transport of detritus from the mountains”—a statement which he expands by quoting from Playfair instead of from Hutton. If, as I hope, the project of reissue of Vols. I and II materialises, it should be possible to make them much more palatable by adding a few judicious footnotes as Geikie has done in relation to Vol. III.