James Hutton (1726-1797)

BIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT of the late Dr JAMES HUTTON,
F. R. S. EDIN.

      [Read by Mr PLAYFAIR, 10th January 1803.]

DR JAMES HUTTON was the son of Mr WILLIAM HUT-
ton, merchant in Edinburgh, and was born in that city
on the 3d of June 1726. His father, a man highly respected
for his good sense and integrity, and who for some years held
the office of City Treasurer, died while JAMES was very young.
The care of her son’s education devolved of course on Mrs
HUTTON, who appears to have been well qualified for discharging
this double portion of parental duty. She resolved to bestow
on him a liberal education, and sent him first to the High
School of Edinburgh, and afterwards to the University, where
he entered as a student of humanity in November 1740.

OF the masters under whom he studied there, MACLAURIN
was by far the most eminent, and Dr HUTTON, though he had
cultivated the mathematical sciences less than any other, never
mentioned the lectures of that celebrated Professor but in terms
of high admiration.

HE used also to acknowledge his obligations to Professor STE-
VENSON’s Prelections on Logic; not so much, however, for ha-
ving made him a logician as a chemist. The fact that gold is
dissolved in aqua regia, and that two acids which can each of

VOL. V.—P. III.

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them