Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/430

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414 H U T H U T Strauss (Ulrich von Hutten, 1857; 2d ed., 1871; English transla tion by Sturge, 1874), with which maybe compared the monographs by Potton (accompanying liis translation in French of the Morbus Gallicus, 1805), Molmicke, Wageaseil, Von Brunnow, Bdrck, and Coining. See also Panzer (Ulrich von Hutten in liter arischcr Hinsicht, 1798) ; and K. Hagen (" [Jlrich von Hutten in poli- tischer Beziehung" in his Z tir politischen Gcschichto Deutsc.hlands, 18-24). (G. V. K.) HUTTON, CHARLES (1737-1823), the youngest son of Henry and Eleanor Hutton, was born at Nevvcastle-on- Tyne, August 14, 1737. His father was an underviewer in the coal-works in the neighbourhood, and died in June 1*74:2 ; but his mother s second husband, Francis Frairn, proved kind to the boy,, and, in consequence of a slight accident to the elbow-joint of his right arm, sent him to school while his brothers worked in the pits. The most of his education he received in a school at Jesmond, kept by Mr Ivison, a clergyman of the church of England. There is reason to believe, on the evidence of two pay-bills, that far a short time iu 1755 and 1756 Hutton worked in Old Long Benton colliery ; at any rate, on Ivison s promo tion to a living, Hutton succeeded to the Jesmond school, whence, in consequence of increasing pupils, he removed to Stote s Hall. While he taught during the day at Stote s H ill, he studied mathematics in the evening at a school in Newcastle. In 1760 he married, and began the work of tuition on a larger scale in Newcastle, where he had among his pupils John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon, chancellor of England. In 1764 he published his first work, The Schoolmaster s Guile, or a Complete System of Practical Arithmetic, which in 1770 was followed by his Treatise on Mensuration b<>th iu Theory and Practice. In 1772 appeared a tract on T/ie Principles of Bridges, suggested by the destruction of Newcastle bridge by a high flood on 17th November 1771. On a vacancy occurring in the professor ship of mathematics at the Eoyal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1773, Hutton became a candidate, and after a severe competitive contest was appointed to the post. He was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1774, and at their request drew up an account of the calculations to determine the mean density and mass of the earth made by him from the measurements taken in 1774-76 at Schiehallion in Perthshire. This account appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1778, was afterwards re printed in the second volume of his Tracts on Mathematical and Philosophical Subjects, and procured for Hutton the degree of LL.D. from the university of Edinburgh. He was elected foreign secretary to the Royal Society in 1779, but his resignation in 1783 was brought about by the president Sir Joseph Banks, whose behaviour to the mathe matical section of the society was somewhat high-handed (see Kippis s Observations on the late Contests in the Royal Society, London, 1784). After his Tables of the Products and Poivers of Numbers, 1781, and his Mathematical Tables, 1785, he issued, for the use of the Royal Military Academy, in 1787 Elements of Conic Sections, and in 1798 his Course of Mathematics. The last, at the time it appeared, was much superior in mode of treatment to any existing work on the subject, and in succeeding editions the author incor porated many new discoveries ancl methods. The two volumes of his Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, a most valuable contribution to scientific biography, were published in 1795, and the four volumes of Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, mostly a translation from the French, in 1803. One of the most laborious of his works was the abridgment, in conjunction with Drs Shiw and Pearson, of the Philosophical Transactions. This undertaking, the mathematical and scientific parts of which fell to Hutton s share, was completed in 1809, and filled eighteen volumes quarto. Hutton s long-continued con nexion (it extended over fifty-six years) with the mathe matical periodicals of his time, whether as contributor or editor, deserves a word of notice. His name first appears in the Ladies Diary (a poetical and mathematical almanac which was begun in 1704, lasted on till 1871, and which " contributed more to the study and improvement of mathematics than half the books professedly written on the subject") in the year 1764; ten years later he was appointed editor of the almanac, a post which he retained till 1817. Previous to his editorship of the Diary, he had begun a small periodical, Miscellanea Mathematica, which extended only to thirteen numbers ; subsequently to it, he published in five volumes The Diarian Miscellany, which consisted of all the useful and entertaining parts of the Diary down to 1773, with many additional solutions and improvements. On the resignation, owing to failing health, of his professorship in 1807, he was allowed a pension of 500 a year. He died on 27th January 1823. All the biographical notices of Hutton are unanimous in describing him as one of the most skilful of teachers, and the most amiable of men. His modesty and sim plicity were as remarkable as his intellectual gifts. To his friends and pupils he exhibited a warmth of personal affection that attached both to him in a very rare degree. It was also with him a sacred duty to seek out the poor and unbefriended student of science, and promote and otherwise assist him to the best of his power. HUTTON, JAMES (1726-1797), one of the great founders of geological science, was born in Edinburgh on 3d June 1726. Educated at the high school and university of his native city, he acquired while still a student a passionate love of scientific inquiry. It had been decided that he should pursue a professional career, and he was accordingly apprenticed to a lawyer. But as instead of copying law papers he was sometimes found amusing his fellow-clerks with chemical experiments, his employer with much sagacity advised that a more congenial profession thin the law should be chosen for him. The young apprentice, released from his engagement, chose medicine as the pursuit nearest akin to his favourite study of chemistry. He studied for three years at Edinburgh, and completed his medical education by an attendance of nearly two years at the medical classes in Paris, returning by the Low Countries, and taking his degree of doctor of medicine at Leyden in 1749. At the end of that year he came back to England, only to find, however, that though he had qualified himself to practise as a medical man there seemed hardly any opening for him. In the summer of the ensuing year he definitively abandoned the idea of following out the medical profession, and, having inherited a small property in Berwickshire from his father, resolved to devote him self to agriculture. With the zeal and thoroughness characteristic of his disposition, he then went to Norfolk to learn the practical work of farming. Thereafter he extended his experience by a tour in Holland, Belgium, and the north of France. -During these years he began to study the surface of the earth, looking into every pit, ditch, or river-bed that he saw, and gradually shaping in his mind the problem to which he afterwards devoted his energies. In the summer of 1754 he established himself on his own farm in Berwickshire, where he resided for fourteen years, and where he introduced the most improved forms of hus bandry. As the farm was brought into excellent order, arid as its management, becoming more easy, grew less interesting, he was finally induced to let it, and establish himself for the rest of his life in Edinburgh. This took place about the year 1768. From this period until his death in 1797 he lived unmarried with his three sisters. Surrounded by congenial literary and scientific friends, he devoted himself to those

researches which have had so important an influence upon