460 Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
fair, Adam Smith, William Robertson, Dugald Stewart, Adam 
Rergusson, Alexander Monro {seciindus), James Gregory, Henry Mac- 
kenzie, Allan Maconochie, and William Miller of Glenlee. I ought to 
add to these Sir James Hall of Dunglass and Sir George Maxwell of 
Penicuick. Some of these names are European, all are celebrated, 
and these were men who for the most part did not merely contribute 
the lustre of their names to the infant association, but lent the 
practical vigour of their great intellectual power to aid in the first 
steps of its progress. And very soon the impress thus stamped on 
the Society began to establish its reputation in the world, and it 
took no undistinguished place among the learned societies of Europe. 
I find the names of Goethe and Buffon among the original foreign 
members ; and although the events of the next twenty years inter- 
rupted our relations with the Continent, by the time the Society had 
completed the half century, there was scarcely a distinguished savant 
in Europe who had not joined or been invited into our ranks. 
In the physical class were four men who rose to great positions 
in the scientific world, and to whom the Society were greatly 
indebted for its general reputation, and for the vigour and 
efficiency with which their proceedings commenced. They were 
James Hutton, Joseph Black, John Playfair, and Dugald Stewart. 
Hutton and Black were then in the zenith of their fame, and have 
left a strong impress on the first years of our Society. Hutton was 
a most assiduous and energetic member. He had the distinction in 
the very first volume of the Transactions of lighting up two 
scientific conflagrations which blazed fiercely throughout Europe for 
many years afterwards. One was his theory of the earth, over 
which the Neptunists and Yulcanists fought with much fury, and 
the flames of which are perhaps not altogether extinct. Much has 
been learned on these subjects since that time. Whether the world 
of geology has been fused into a coherent mass by reason of this 
combustion I need not inquire. There have been theories of the 
earth since then, and possibly the slumbering embers may be re- 
kindled. The other controversy was of narrower dimensions, and 
related to a paper of Hutton’s on the “ Theory of Rain,” which was 
strongly attacked by M. de Luc, a Erench philosopher, and de- 
fended by Hutton in the Transactions with not a little asperity. 
That Hutton should have succeeded in the very outset of the 
