■124 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
Two subjects of reflection have been forcibly brought before me 
in lately renewing, after a long interval of time, my acquaint- 
ance with Hutton’s own treatise. Firstly, Though he was cultivat- 
ing a field of inquiry almost entirely new, and developing a vast 
multitude of new argumentative facts and views, there is scarcely 
a proposition made from first to last to which a well-instructed 
modern geologist may not give his assent. Secondly, In his essay 
of ninety-six quarto pages, he has given his successors in all 
branches of science a remarkable lesson — a most luminous narra- 
tive on a most novel subject, without coining a single new' term, 
or quitting plain English words, unless in the case of a very few 
German names for rocks previously in universal use among 
geologists. Much of the repulsiveness of many branches of science 
to the general student of the present time is no doubt owing to the 
apparent necessity of a recondite and mysterious nomenclature. 
Hutton has shown that the most novel and profound inquiries may 
be propounded with precision, in his day at any rate, without such 
aid. 
The Huttonian theory, though welcomed by many able pro- 
selytes, likewise encountered not a few equally able adversaries. 
These belonged chiefly to the followers of Werner, or Neptun- 
ians, who recognised nothing but the force of water in all the 
apparent revolutions on the earth’s surface. The controversy 
against Huttonianism was for several years carried on at the 
meetings of this Society with great talent and energy under the 
leadership of Professor Jameson, a favourite pupil of Werner him- 
self, and the greatest adherent ever gained to the side of that 
philosopher. Huttonianism may therefore be truly said to have 
attained its highest triumph when, in the apartment where we are 
now met, Jameson, not many years before his death, as some of us 
must well remember, publicly renounced the creed he had taught 
for half a century, and paid an uncompromising tribute to the truth 
and profoundness of the Huttonian theory of the earth. 
While Hutton’s theory was undergoing probation in its early 
days, some rather troublesome objections were brought against it 
by its ingenious adversaries. Among these may be here mentioned 
two, and two only, because they directly gave birth to certain able 
experimental researches by Sir James Hall, who became our second 
