258 Hutlon according to Play/air. 



Long and continued practice had increased his powers of 

 observation to a high degree of perfection ; so that, in discrimi- 

 nating mineral substances, and in seizing the affinities or differ- 

 ences among geological appearances, he had an acuteness hardly 

 to be excelled. The eulogy so happily conveyed in the Italian 

 phrase of osservatore ocuIatissimOf might most justly be applied 

 to him ; for, with an accurate eye for perceiving the characters 

 of natural objects, he had, in equal perfection, the power of 

 interpreting their signification, and of decyphering those ancient 

 hieroglyphics which record the revolutions of the globe. There 

 may have been other mineralogists, who could describe as well 

 the structure, the figure, the smell, or the colour of a specimen, 

 but there are few who equalled him in reading the characters 

 which tell not only what a fossil is, but what it has been, and 

 declare the series of changes through which it has passed. His 

 expertness in this art, the fineness of his observations, and the 

 ingenuity of his reasonings, wei-e truly admirable. It would, I 

 am persuaded, be difficult to find in any of the sciences a better 

 illustration of the profound maxims established by Bacon, in his 

 Prcerogativce Instantiarum, than were often afforded by Dr 

 Hutton's mineralogical disquisitions, when he exhibited his spe- 

 cimens and discoursed on them with his friends. No one could 

 better apply the luminous instances to elucidate the obscure, the 

 decisive to interpret the doubtful, or the simple to unravel the 

 complex. None was more skilful in marking gradations of Na- 

 ture, as she passes from one extreme to another; more diligent 

 in observing the continuity of her proceedings, or more sagacious 

 in tracing her footsteps, even where they were most lightly im- 

 pressed. With him, therefore, mineralogy was not a mere study 

 of names and external characters (though he was singularly well 

 versed in that study also), but it was a subhme and important 

 branch of physical science, which had for its object to unfold 

 the connexion between the past, the present, and the future 

 condition of the globe. 



The loss sustained by the death of Dr Hutton was aggravated 

 to those who knew him, by the consideration of how much of 

 his knowledge had perished with himself, and notwithstanding 

 all that he had written, how much of the light collected by a 

 long life of experience and observation was now completely ex- 



