Geoscience Reference
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Hutton's house at St John's Hill, Edinburgh', Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, new
series, vol. 4 (1998 for 1997), 107-112, who also described the Hutton Memorial
Garden in the Newsletter of the History of Geology Group of the Geological Society
of London, number 16 (August 2002), 11-12. Gordon Herries Davies discusses
Hutton and time in The Earth in Decay (1969), while David J. Leveson outlined
Hutton's methodology in Archives of Natural History 23, part 1 (1996), 61-77.
However, if you wish to read only one volume on Hutton and his work, that by
Dennis Dean would be beneficial: James Hutton and the History of Geology (Ithaca &
London: Cornell University Press, 1992). Facsimiles of Hutton's 1785 abstract
were published in White's Contributions to the History of Geology (1970), and in
1997 by the Edinburgh University Library. The former has an introduction authored
by Victor A. Eyles, and the latter an accompanying introduction by Gordon Craig.
The volume by White reproduces Hutton's 1788 paper in full; David Oldroyd has
provided an annotated version of this seminal paper: 'Benchmark papers in the
history of geology. 1. James Hutton's ''Theory of the Earth'' (1788)', Episodes 23
(2000), 196-200. Peter J. Wyllie has written several papers on the experimental work
on the melting and recrystallisation of basalt carried out by Sir James Hall: 'Hutton
and Hall on theory and experiments: the view after 2 centuries', Episodes 21, part 1
(1998), 3-10; and 'Hot little crucibles are pressured to reveal and calibrate igneous
processes', in Craig and Hull, James Hutton - Present and Future (1999), pp. 37-57.
Although S. I. Tomkeieff's paper on the history of thought on unconformities is over
forty years old it still has not been bettered: S. I. Tomkeieff, 'Unconformity - an
historical study', Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 73, part 4 (1962),
383-416. In this paper he quotes Hutton's 1795 descriptions of the discovery of
the Arran unconformity, and some of that quotation is reproduced here.
The work of de Luc has been discussed by Martin Rudwick in 'Jean-Andr
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Luc and nature's chronology', in Lewis and Knell The Age of the Earth (2001),
pp. 51-60. An account of the Neptunist-Volcanist/Plutonist debate may be found
in Gordon L. Herries Davies, 'The Neptunian and Plutonic Theories', in D. G.
Smith (ed.), Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Earth Sciences (Cambridge University
Press, 1981). William Richardson's views are elaborated in Patrick N. Wyse Jackson,
'Tumultuous times: geology in Ireland and the debate on the nature of basalt and
other rocks of north-east Ireland between 1740 and 1816', in P. N. Wyse Jackson
(ed.), Science and Engineering in Ireland in 1798: A Time of Revolution (Dublin:
Royal Irish Academy, 2000), pp. 35-50. Martin Anglesea and J. Preston discuss and
illustrate the work of Susanna Drury in ' ''A philosophical landscape'': Susanna
Drury and the Giant's Causeway', Art History 3 (1980), 252-273. The best discus-
sion of the work of Desmarest remains that by Ken Taylor, 'Nicolas Desmarest and
geology in the eighteenth century', in Schneer Toward a History of Geology (1969),
