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HUTTON, (, an eminent philosophical character, was born in Edinburgh on the 3rd June, 1726. His father was a respectable merchant, who for many years held the office of city treasurer, and was admired by all who knew him, for his sound judgment and strict integrity. He died while James was very young; the care, therefore, of her son's education devolved upon Mrs Hutton, whose great maternal kindness was only exceeded by her desire to give her son a liberal education. She sent him first to the High school of Edinburgh, and afterwards to the university, where he entered as a student of humanity in 1740. Professor M'Laurin was then the most celebrated teacher in that seminary, but though Dr Hutton admired his lectures, he did not seem much disposed towards the science which he taught. To professor Stevenson's prelections on logic may be attributed the first direction given to young Hutton's genius, not so much for having made him a logician, but for having accidentally directed his mind towards the science of chemistry. The professor having casually mentioned in one of his lectures, in illustration of some general doctrine, the fact, that gold is dissolved in aqua regia, and that two acids, which can each of them singly dissolve any baser metals, must unite their strength before they can attack the most precious ; the phenomenon struck so forcibly on the mind of Hutton, that he began to search with avidity after books which might explain its cause, and afford him an opportunity of pursuing a study altogether new. He at first found some embarrassments in his pursuit from the superficial works that came to his hands, and it was from Harris's Lexicon Techni that he first derived his knowledge of chemistry, and which by a sort of elective attraction drew his mind all at once to a favourite study, that decided his prospects in life.

Though he pursued his academical studies with closeness and regularity, and evinced a taste and capacity for instruction, his friends did not see much profit likely to arise from scientific pursuits, and accordingly persuaded him to adopt some profession, which, though much against his inclination, he agreed to, and was accordingly placed as an apprentice with Mr George Chalmers, writer to the signet, in 1743. The dry routine of a laborious professor in a less ardent