Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Following this episode of field work, Hutton, instead of commit-
ting his geological thoughts immediately into the hands of the type-
setters, allowed his interests in chemistry to intervene and he
embarked on a number of studies in this area. Two events conspired
to get him back to his geological writing. In 1793 he was laid lowwith
a serious medical condition and had to subject himself to the surgeon's
scalpel to relieve his tendency to retain urine. As he was recovering
from this ordeal he received a copy of Kirwan's paper 'Examination of
supposed igneous origin of stony substances' which had just been
published in the fifth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish
Academy. It contained a rebuttal of Hutton's 1785 theory. This cannot
have pleased him.
That very day, Hutton began composing his response, and it was
published in London and Edinburgh in 1795 in book form, in two
volumes, as Theory of the Earth, with Proofs and Illustrations. The
third volume was not published until 1899, when the then Director of
the Geological Survey of Great Britain, Archibald Geikie (1835-1924),
arranged for its publication by the Geological Society of London. For
many years this manuscript had been stored alongside Hutton's two
published volumes in the library of the Geological Society of London
in Piccadilly where it had been deposited for safe-keeping by Leonard
Horner. Perhaps it is this manuscript, or perhaps that on agriculture,
or both, that is illustrated piled high on a table cluttered with some
fossils and veinose rocks in Sir Henry Raeburn's fine oil painting of
Hutton, finished about nine years before the sitter's death.
Hutton's death in 1799 probably resulted in his theory not get-
ting the continued exposure that it deserved. But his reputation was
enhanced and his theory advertised widely with the publication of
John Playfair's book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth,
published in 1802 by Hutton's own publisher.
HUTTONCOMMEMORATED
James Hutton's house in Edinburgh has now disappeared, having been
demolished in the late 1960s, but recently the site has been put to good
