As is well known, the Society was founded in 1834 and is in fact the fourth oldest geological society in the British isles. Its origins can be precisely dated to a meeting on Thursday 4 December in that year in Robertson's Tavern in Milne's Close off the: Lawnmarket of eleven members of a class in mineralogy. These even Edinburgh citizens whose names are all recorded, resolved to start a society for'discussion an d Mutual Instruction, to meet in the Mr Rose's house, 2 Drummond Street, every Monday evening at half past eight'. Alexander Rose (1781-1860), a wood turner and mineral dealer, conducted classes in mineralogy in Edinburgh under the auspices of Queen's College, a teaching association existing in the city at that time. Later, as the Society developed, it came to occupy rooms first at 5 St Andrew Square and then in the Synod Hall in Castle Terrace (Butcher, 1991) before the present arrangements came into being in the 1960s.

Born at Kinnordy outside Kirriemuir in what was then Forfarshire on 14 November 1797, Charles Lyell moved with his parents to Bartley Lodge in Hampshire near Southampton where he was brought up and this explains why he is often referred to as an English geologist. having entered Exeter College in Oxford in 1816, he made the first of several visits to Edinburgh the following year. He was a elected a fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1819 and it was with that Society that his geological activities were conducted. Lyell certainly visited Edinburgh in the 1830's, after the publication between 1830 and 1838 of the three volumes of his Principles of Geology in London, though there is no evidence that he had any involvement with the Edinburgh Geological Society in its early years. It is, however, worth recording that Sir Charles Lyell of Kinnordy, then resident in London at 73 Harley Street, was elected Patron of the Society in 1871, a pOSition held until his death in 1875. He died on 22 February and is buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey in London. At the end of the Lyell Meeting in London as part of the bicentennial Conference in 1997, organised jointly by the Geological Society and Royal Society of Edinburgh, delegates visited Lyell s home in Harley Street on Saturday 2 August. The visit was led by Professor Gerald Friedman from the USA and was followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at Westminster Abbey in which both Lady Lyell and her son Lord Lyell, participated.

In contrast to the prominence enjoyed by Charles Lyell, in both his life and death, James Hutton fell into some obscurity on his death in Edinburgh in 1797. Of course, John Playfair (1748-1819) promoted Hutton's life and work after Hutton's death, but in a sense he did Hutton a disservice in that later authors, including Lyell, relied on Playfair's account of Hutton and did not read the original texts for themselves. Dennis Dean (1992, p. 229) has made the interesting observation that 'the Edinburgh Geological Society .... was so obviously Huttonian that it effectively superseded the almost moribund Wernerian Society.' However, the Wernerian Natural History Society, founded in Edinburgh by Robert Jameson (1774-1854) in 1808, catered for a different membership to that of the Edinburgh Geological Society in its early years.

Recognition of Hutton as the founder of modern geology was only really advanced by Archibald Geikie (1835-1924) in 1871 of his Scottish School of Geology of which he acknowledged Hutton to be the founder. Interestingly, under Geikie's presidency, the Edinburgh Geological Society established a link with Hutton by electing his descendant, John Hutton Balfour (1808-1884), Regius Keeper, Queen's Botanist and Professor of Botany in the University of Edinburgh, as an Honorary Fellow in 1863.

Despite Geikie's efforts, the obscurity conferred on Hutton in Edinburgh was only finally reviewed by a lecture given by Professor Sergei Tomkieff of Newcastleupon-Tyne to the Edinburgh Geological Society on 19 March 1947. Entitled'James Hutton and the Philosophy of Geology', the text was published in the Society's Transactions in 1948 and later reprinted, with other papers on Hutton by Murray MacGregor, Sir Edward Bailey, G W Tyrrell and V A Eyles in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of Hutton's death, published in 1950. On 3 November 1947, the Lord Provost Sir John Falconer unveiled a memorial tablet to Hutton in the Greyfriars Churchyard (Plate 1), The Scotsman's photograph published the next day showing the Mister of Greyfriars, Rev D W P Strang, and Mr A H Balfour, a family descendant, in attendance. This tablet recording Hutton as the Founder of Modern Geology was placed on the east wall of that part of the churchyard known as the Covenanters Prison, in the lair of the Balfour family to whom Hutton was related through his mother, Sarah Balfour.

The Lecture by Professor Tomkieff in 1947 had a profound effect on a young Edinburgh graduate who attended, Donald B Mclntyre, and who was then on the Society's Council. Fifty years later, on the exact bicentenary of Hutton's death, 26 March 1997, Professor Mclntyre delivered the following eulogy of Hutton at an informal wreath-laying ceremony in the Greyfriars Churchyard during a walk from the National Museums of Scotland in Chambers Street organised by Christine Thompson as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival programme:

"In 1797 people still believed that the Earth was only 6000 years old, but James Hutton showed the age was far more than that. Measurements possible today prove the age of the Earth is a million times greater.

Hutton asked: 'How shall we acquire the knowledge of a system calculated for millions, not of years only, nor the ages of Man, but of the races of men, and the successions of empires?' And he answered: 'We must read the transactions of time past in the present state of natural bodies'. We acknowledge the silent testimony of the rocks, knowing as Hutton taught, that the Present is the Key to the Past.

Hume, Scott, and Hutton were the three great thinkers of the Enlightenment born and bred in this city. Yet Hutton, beloved by all who knew him, lay here for 150 years in an unmarked grave. Fifty years ago Arthur Holmes, the most distinguished geologist of his time, said: 'To the geologists a rock is a page in the Earth's autobiography with a story to unfold'. Hutton showed how to read it; doing so he disclosed the marvel of deep time: 'We perceive', he said 'a fabric, erected in wisdom'.

Playfair wrote of his friend: 'With his exquisite relish for whatever is beautiful and sublime in science, we may easily conceive what pleasure' he derived form his own geological speculations. The novelty and grandeur of the objects offered to them to the imagination, the simple and uniform order given to the whole natural history of the Earth, and, above all, the views opened of the wisdom that governs nature, are things to which hardly any man could be insensible; but to him they were the matter, not of transient delight, but of solid and permanent happiness.'

Today we have come to know that living creatures evolve, that continental drift, the stars, and galaxies born, mature, grow old and die. We salute the memory of James Hutton, who opened our minds to these wondrous possibilities."

Later in 1997, during the International Bicentennial Hutton Meeting organised by The Royal Society of Edinburgh at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, a patinated bronze plaque to James Hutton made by Charles Laing & Sons Limited was unveiled on 6 August at St John's Hill by Professor Stewart Sutherland, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and Councillor Brian Weddell, Chairman 5: Housing Committee, City of Edinburgh Council. The brief ceremony was hosted. by the Society's President, David Land, and Fraser Morrison CBE, Executive Chairman of the Morrison Construction Group plc and Professor Malcolm Jeeves CBE, President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh also participated. The 200 or so onlookers included the two sons of Mr A H Balfour present at the 1947 unveiling i of the Hutton tablet in Greyfriars Churchyard, Mr lain R Balfour and Mr Ralph A Balfour, together with Mrs Persis Aglen, another Hutton family descendant.

The plaque mounted on a single block of Clashach stone on which was carved the famous quotation from Hutton's 1788 paper: ' we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' Surrounding this were placed boulders showing granite veins '. from the exact locality discovered by James Hutton in September 1785 in Glen Tilt, together with other boulders of conglomerate from Barbush on the edge of Dunblane.

The cost of the plaque was met from a fund launched through the Edinburgh Geological Society to which individuals contributed. many organisations contributed to the whole project, especially the Morrison Construction Group who are developing the adjacent area of St John's Hill. The actual site of Hutton's house and garden has been acquired from the City Council by the University of Edinburgh who will undertake its long-term maintenance. After the ceremony, the stone bearing the plaque and the other boulders were removed for safe keeping to the BGS store at Loanhead pending the construction of a James Hutton Memorial Garden on the site. A replica of the plaque was commissioned by BGS who will undertake its safe storage. A leaflet to accompany the unveiling ceremony was produced through a a generous grant from the Curry Fund of the Geologist's Association. Accounts of the ceremony were published in the Scots Magazine for October 1997 and in several newsletters of other societies in addition to the Scotsman and Daily Mail reports on the day following the ceremony.

References

BUTCHER, N.E.1991. The Hole in the Ground. The Edinburgh Geologist, 26, 12-17.

BUTCHER, N.E. 1997. James Hutton's House at St John's Hill, Edinburgh. Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. New Series, 4.

DEAN, D. 1992. James Hutton and the History of Geology. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, pp 303 + xiii.

GEIKIE, A. 1871. The Scottish School of Geology. Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas, pp 27.