Inaugural Address: Old Edinburgh geologists

Abstract

It is generally admitted that the modern science of Geology owes its fundamental principle of “Uniformity” to an Edinburgh man—James Hutton. By the adoption of this principle, which means that we should interpret the past by what we observe around us to-day, the science has been established on sure foundations, and has made great and ceaseless progress. James Hutton (1726-1797) was born in Edinburgh on 3rd June 1726, and was the son of William Hutton, Merchant, and City Treasurer. He was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh, and although apprenticed to a Writer to the Signet, preferred the study of Medicine to that of Law. For three years he studied medicine in the University of Edinburgh, afterwards proceeding to Paris and Leyden. At the latter University he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine. Having inherited from his father the property of Sligh Houses in Berwickshire, Hutton abandoned Medicine for Agriculture, and after studying under a Norfolk farmer, he resolutely set himself to improve the backward state of agriculture in Berwickshire, and introduced several reforms. He afterwards wrote a “Treatise on Agriculture,” the MS. of which (unpublished) is in the Library of the Edinburgh Geological Society. In 1764, Hutton made an extensive tour through the North of Scotland with his friend Sir George Clerk, and the rocks they met with and examined on the way turned his mind to geology. In 1768 he let his Berwickshire farm and removed to Edinburgh, where he became one of a