HUTTON, JAMES, M.D., the author of the Huttonian theory of the earth, was born at Edinburgh, June 3, 1726, and died in 1797. After passing through the ordinary courses at the High School and University of his native city, he began the study of the law, but soon exchanged it for the more congenial pursuits of natural science. He studied medicine for three years at Edinburgh, then for two in Paris, and finally graduated at Leyden. Returning to London in 1749, he began to practise as a physician, but with such small success that in the following year he removed to Scotland, where, inheriting his father's estate, he devoted himself to agriculture. A residence in England, and afterwards in the Low Countries, perfected him in that art as then understood, and enabled him to introduce those improvements into the husbandry of Scotland that have made the agricultural system of that country the most perfect now in use. The last thirty years of his life were devoted chiefly to those geological and meteorological studies of which he embodied the results in his Theory of the Earth, and his Theory of Rain. The illustrations of these works by Playfair are justly regarded as among the finest specimens of philosophical writing that the English tongue has to show. The value of Hutton's contributions to natural science, and his place in the history of that branch of philosophy, are discussed in the sixth Preliminary Dissertation to this work by Professor Forbes, par. 591. Hutton's Life has been written by his friend Playfair, in Edin. Transactions, vol. v.