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Note on the Original Publication of Hutton's Theory of the Earth, and on the Subsequent Forms in which it was Issued

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

V. A. Eyles
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Summary of contents

Description of a little known anonymous pamphlet, an “Abstract” of the paper read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1785, in which James Hutton first announced publicly his famous Theory of the Earth. Reasons are advanced for concluding that Hutton himself was the author of the “Abstract”, and that it was published in 1785, some three years before the Royal Society paper was issued in the Society's Transactions. The writer concludes that the “Abstract”, and not, as has hitherto been supposed, the Transactions paper, constitutes the first form in which The Theory was published. The “Abstract” is reprinted in small type on p. 380.

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. 377 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1949

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References

page 377 note * Now in the possession of the author.

page 377 note † Mr Munro had been aware of the existence of the pamphlet for some time before it came to the notice of the writer.

page 377 note ‡ The books and pamphlets presented by the late Professor Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, F.R.S., to the Library of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. These he inherited from his father, Professor John Hutton Balfour, F.R.S., who, Mr Munro states, had them from his father, Dr Andrew Balfour, who was brought up by Dr James Hutton and lived with the latter for several years.

page 378 note * I.e. as opposed to those of the “Literary Class”, since discontinued.

page 380 note * There are two senses in which the term solidity is used; one of these is in opposition to fluidity, the other to vacuity. When the change from the fluid state to that of solidity, in the first sense, is to be expressed, we shall employ the term concretion; consequently, the consolidation of a mass is only to be understood as in opposition to its vacuity, or porousness.

page 382 note * Henry Sotheran, Ltd., Bibliotheca Chemico-Mathematica, 2nd Supplement, 1937, 1, 541.

page 383 note * Trans. Edin. Geol. Soc, xiii, Part II, 1935, p. 212.Google Scholar

page 383 note † Playfair, J., “Biographical Account of Dr James Hutton”, in The Works of John Playfair, iv, 1822, 100 (also printed in Transactions, V, 39).Google Scholar

page 383 note ‡ See Henry Cockburn, Memorials of His Time, Edinburgh, 1856, p. 182.Google Scholar

page 383 note § “An Account of Observations made by Lord Webb Seymour and Professor Playfair, upon some Geological Appearances in Glen Tilt, and the Adjacent Country”, Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., VII, 1815, 373.Google Scholar

page 383 note ║ Loc. cit., p. 212.

page 384 note * LII, 1895, 569.

page 384 note † Fitton, W. H., “A Review of Mr Lyell's Elements of Geology; with Observations on the Progress of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth”, Edin. Review, LXIX, 1839, 455 (footnote).Google Scholar

page 384 note ‡ See, in this connection, the Addendum at the end of this paper.

page 386 note * The business is now carried on, under the same title, by Dr Junk's son-in-law and partner, Dr Weisbach, at Amsterdam, N.Z. Voorburgwal 64.