427 
of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
boidal form of calcareous spar. Sir James valued these striking 
results chiefly on account of their irresistible bearing on the Hut- 
tonian theory. But, however important they may be in that rela- 
tionship, they possess high intrinsic merit; and it seems surprising 
that his method of inquiry has not been extended to other sub- 
stances. 
Hutton made a collection of specimens for illustrating his theory 
of the earth. This collection was presented to Dr Black by Hut- 
ton’s sister and representative; Black made it over to the Boyul 
Society; and as the Society had determined not to keep up a museum 
of its own, Hutton’s collection was transferred to the Museum of 
the University. It must be a subject of keen grief to every lover 
of geological science, and to every man who feels the respect which 
is due to the great men of former days, that there is great reason 
to fear that this collection has been lost sight of, and may not now 
be capable of being identified. It must have been extensive; for 
I find in the old manuscripts of the Society’s Proceedings, that a 
committee of Fellows, appointed to conduct its transference to the 
University Museum, asked no less than a twelvemonth to arrange 
it. We can scarcely doubt that it was transferred; for it certainly 
has not been in this Society’s possession since I became a Fellow. 
But it has never been displayed in the University Museum ; for 
indeed it was a perpetual complaint of the late Professor Jameson, 
that he had no space for exhibiting any collection of rocks at all 
in the museum. Mr Archer informs me that no such collection 
has yet come to light in the course of the examination of the vast 
geological accumulations during the keepersliip of Jameson, now 
in the National Museum of Science and Art; and that he doubts, 
from the state of the portion already examined, whether it will be 
possible to identify any special part of it. The Society will con- 
fidently rely on his zeal and care in this matter; and I submit 
whether it is not the Society’s duty to consider what it can do to 
save geology from a calamity so deplorable and so discreditable to 
the scientific history of Edinburgh, as would be the loss of Hutton’s 
own collection which illustrated the Iluttonian theory. 
The summary now given of the Proceedings of the Boyal Society 
of Edinburgh during the first twenty years of its existence, does not 
