Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:57:28.286Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh 1748–1768

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Roger L. Emerson
Roger L. Emerson
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh which had flourished for a few years after 1738 was as good as dead in 1748. Lord Morton, its President, now lived most of the time in London whence he wrote to Sir John Clerk in 1747 that he regarded the Society as ‘annihilated’, apparently thinking that the death of Colin MacLaurin in 1746 and the temporary retirement to the countryside of its other Secretary, Andrew Plummer, had put an end to it. Sir John had hoped to revive it through association with the Royal Society of London, but Morton did not encourage him in this scheme, about which he had ‘great doubts’. The Society needed a mathematician and an experimenter who could carry on the consulting work which MacLaurin had done, but Morton glumly wondered if ‘the new professor of Mathematics [Matthew Stewart] will be as zealous as MacLaurin had been.’ The Society's other officers, Dr John Clerk and Alexander Lind, are not known to have tried to revive the Society. Perhaps they were discouraged by the fact that ten (22%) of the members of the Society were dead, and that six more (1396) had left the kingdom. At least three others (7%) were likely to have been habitually absent from meetings because they lived some distance from Edinburgh. Of the remaining forty-five known members in 1748, nine (20%) were over sixty-one years of age with four being between seventy-one and seventy-six. In 1737 the average age of thirty-eight of the founders had been 46.0, but by 1748 it had risen to 53.9 for the thirty-three men for whom it can be calculated. Disruption, death, and age had diminished enthusiasm for the Society and jeopardized its survival. Only two meetings are known to have been held in 1746. Sir John's letter to Morton about affiliation with the Royal Society is the only clear sign of life in 1747. We may well ask why this floundering body survived, to whom and to what it owed its revival? The answers to these questions tell us something about the intellectual needs and interests of the Edinburgh intelligentsia of the mid-eighteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , July 1981 , pp. 133 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

This paper is the second of three parts. The first, ‘The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, 1737–1747’, was published in The British journal for the history of science, 1979, 12, 154–91.

For permission to consult or to quote from manuscripts in their possession I should like to thank the Marquis of Bute; Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Bt;James Stirling, Esq., of Buchlyvie; Dr T. I. Rae, Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland; Dr John Imrie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland; Mr C. A. McLaren, Keeper of Manuscripts at Aberdeen University Library; Mr C. P. Finlayson, formerly Keeper of Manuscripts at the University of Edinburgh; Mr jack Baldwin, Keeper of Special Collections at Glasgow University Library; Miss Margaret Ferguson, Librarian at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh; Mr Edward C. Carter II, Librarian of the American Philosophical Society; Mrs Anne Donato, Librarian of the Waring Historical Library at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Editor's note: The Canadian postal strike of june—August 1981 made it impossible for the author to check the proofs of this article. I have made every effort to correct it, and the responsibility for any remaining errors is mine. N.F.

1 Morton, Lord to SirClerk, John, 29 12 1747Google Scholar, Clerk of Penicuik MSs, Scottish Record Office (hereafter SRO), MS. GD 18/5107.

2 The median age rose from 45 to 52.

3 Johnson, Maurice to SirClerk, John, 23 03 1747Google Scholar, SRO, MS. GD 18/5060/2. For information on Johnson and the Spalding Gentlemen's Society see Musson, A. E. and Robinson, Eric, Science and technology in the industrial revolution, Manchester, 1969, pp. 138–42.Google Scholar Johnson and Sir John shared a common friend in Boerhaave, with whom they corresponded; SirClark, George, A history of the Royal College of Physicians of London, Oxford, 1966, ii, 539Google Scholar; Gray, J. M. (ed.), Memoirs of the life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik by himself, Edinburgh, 1892, pp. 16, 17, 24, 35, 236.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Medical essays and observations, 6 vols., Edinburgh, 1733–1744, i, pp. iii–iv, xi–xiv.Google Scholar It may have been an even older ideal. Sir Robert Sibbald apparently collected medical papers given to the club, which evolved into the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, with an eye to future publication; see Craig, W. S., History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Oxford, 1976, p. 167.Google Scholar

5 Essais et observations physiques el litteraires de la Société d'Edinbourg traduits de l'Anglois, par M. P. Demours, Paris, 1747.Google Scholar

6 Thomson, George to Cullen, William, 21 10 1747Google Scholar, Thomson/Cullen MSs, Glasgow University Library (hereafter GUL), MSs. 2255. A portion of this letter is also printed in Thomson, John's An account of the life, lectures and writings of William Cullen, M.D., 2 vols., Edinburgh & London, 1859, i, 32.Google Scholar

7 For information on this society and its limited impact on the Scottish economy, see Ferguson, William, Scotland: 1689 to the present Edinburgh & London, 1969, pp. 169–71.Google Scholar On the background from which it emerged, see Whyte, Ian, Agriculture and society in seventeenth-century Scotland, Edinburgh, 1979.Google Scholar

8 This society and its parent organization is discussed by Emerson, R. L., ‘The social composition of enlightened Scotland: the Select Society of Edinburgh, 1754–1764’. Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 1973, 114, 291–329.Google Scholar

9 There was an agricultural society of Ayrshire which printed a long article ‘On horse-hoeing husbandry’ in the Scots magazine, 1748, 10, 187–90Google Scholar, but there seem to have been no other similar societies in Scotland immediately after 1745.

10 There were at least six amateur observers in the Edinburgh area in 1747; between 1750 and 1768 the Society could count ten men with telescopes and some skill.

11 See Archibald and Clow, Nan L., The chemical revolution: a contribution to social technology, Freeport, NY, 1970Google Scholar (originally published in 1952), passim; Donovan, A. L., Philosophical chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh, 1975, pp. 19–33, 77–92Google Scholar; Musson, and Robinson, , op. cit. (3), pp. 32–7.Google Scholar

12 Clow, and Clow, , op. cit. (11), pp. 130–50.Google Scholar

13 For examples, Scots magazine, 1747, 9, 38–40, 540Google Scholar; 1748, 10, 187–91, 387.

14 Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1788, I, Appendix, pp. 5–6Google Scholar This ‘History of the Society’ also contains a more remarkable error: Kames became President in 1769, not in 1777 as this source states.

15 Tytler, Alexander Fraser, Memoirs of the life and writings of the Honourable Henry Home of Kames, 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1807, i, 184–5.Google Scholar

16 The exchange of letters noticed in n. 1 above, is the only sign of activity in 1747.

17 SirClerk, John to Stukeley, William, 16 07 1748Google Scholar, in Lukis, W. C. (ed.), The family memoirs of the Rev. William Stuckeley, M.D., and the antiquarian correspondence …, 3 vols., Newcastle, 1887, iii, 438.Google Scholar

18 Gray, (ed.), op. cit. (3), pp. 166, 222.Google Scholar

19 Loc. cit. (17).

20 Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1748–1749, 45, 582–97.Google Scholar

21 Ibid.

22 SRO, MS. GD 18/5109.

23 Thomson, , op. cit. (6), i, 62.Google Scholar

24 Cullen MSs, GUL, Box 7.3.3: ‘Reflexions on the principles of agriculture’; Thomson, , op. cit. (6), i, 597.Google Scholar

25 Maitland, William, History of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1753, p. 355.Google Scholar Maitland's account is probably accurate, since he seems to have solicited information from the corporations he described; see Creswell, C. H., The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh: historical notes from 1505 to 1905, Edinburgh, 1926, p. 262.Google Scholar

26 By matching deaths with the likely dates of the admission for new members, one can estimate the size of the Society in 1768 at 60. The excluded colonials are Lionel Chalmers, Peter Duguid, Alexander Garden, and John Lining. The Englishmen are William Brownrigg, Stephen Fell, Abraham Swaine, and Cornwell Tathwell. The dubious include Lord Deskford, Patrick Brydone, George Fordyce, Fell, Swaine, and Tathwell.

27 The percentage of known younger sons is the same in both samples—33. The older men were more expensively educated, often outside Scotland and went into the more exclusive profession of the law rather than medicine. While both could be studied in Scotland by the mid-eighteenth century, medicine cost less to pursue and promised wider prospects because it increased a man's mobility and virtually guaranteed an income once the student qualified as a physician or surgeon.

28 Mathew, W. M.'s study, ‘The origin and occupations of Glasgow students, 1740–1839’, Past and present, 1966, 33, 74–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes a sharp decline in the numbers of aristocratic students attending Glasgow University between 1740 and 1774, and a corresponding rise in numbers of middle- and working-class students. This trend, if it were general in Scotland, would perhaps account for part of the shift in the class composition of this Society. Claims for its generality have difficulties which have been pointed out by Smart, R. N., ‘Some observations on the provinces of the Scottish universities, 1560–1850’, in Barrow, G. W. S. (ed.), The Scottish tradition: essays in honour of Ronald Gordon Cant, Edinburgh, 1974, pp. 91–106.Google Scholar

29 Among the earlier generation of Society members, 39% had tried to become, or were, professors, or had some other official connexion with a university.

30 This figure is based upon a sample of thirty-four men for whom dates of birth and entry are available. It is subject to some error because of the conjectural nature of many of the dates of entry. This problem is discussed in Appendix I.

31 The fourteen Society members who sat collectively for over 100 years in the General Assembly during these years did not play as active or important roles as had the members of the Society during the earlier years.

32 For a good description of the activities of the Commissioners for the Forfeited Estates, and the Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures, and Improvements in Scotland, see Ross, Ian S., Lord Kames and the Scotland of his day, Oxford, 1972, pp. 315–32.Google ScholarClow, and Clow, , op. cit. (11)Google Scholar, have numerous references to the Trustees' work, as does Hamilton, Henry's An economic history of Scotland, Oxford, 1963.Google Scholar The role of Stuart-Mackenzie in Scottish patronage is discussed in two recent studies: Murdoch, Alexander, The people above: politics and administration in mid-eighteenth century Scotland, Edinburgh, 1980Google Scholar; Sher, Richard, ‘Church, University, Enlightenment: the moderate literati of Edinburgh, 1720–1793.’ University of Chicago PhD dissertation, 1979.Google Scholar

33 Seventeen of the men recruited between 1749 and 1768 were related to one or more living or recently deceased Society members. These kinship ties had shifted from the gentry to the medical community, and they had also in several cases become more remote cousinages than the relationships which existed among seventeen of the founding members.

34 Maitland, , op. cit. (25).Google Scholar

35 Typescript excerpts from the Town Council Minutes dealing with Edinburgh University are in D. B. Horn MSs, Edinburgh University Library hereafter (EUL), Box 4.

36 Skene, David to Skene, Andrew, 18 12 1751Google Scholar, Skene MSs, Aberdeen University Library hereafter (AUL), MS. 38.

37 See French, R. K., Robert Whytt, the soul, and medicine, London, 1969Google Scholar; Seller, William, ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of Robert Whytt …’, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, (1862), 23, 99–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 A note on a scrap of paper among the Robert Wallace papers at EUL suggests that a version of this paper was read to the Society around this time; Laing MSs, EUL, MS. II. 96 a. Cf. French, , op. cit. (37), p. 77Google Scholar; The works of Robert Whytt, Edinburgh, 1768Google Scholar, preface to An Essay, etc. The paper was dedicated to Lord Morton.

39 The following works by Whytt were given in the Society: ‘On the vital and other involuntary motions of animals’, a paper on sleep, ‘Observations on the sensibility and irritability of the parts of men and other animals’, and numbers 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 13, and probably 14 of his shorter works discussed by French, , op. cit. (37), pp. 46–62.Google ScholarWallace, , op. cit. (38)Google Scholar; Clerk, David to Cullen, William, 19 07 1755Google Scholar; Clerk, David to Cullen, William, 23 01 1753 (O.S.)Google Scholar, Thomson, /Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6).Google Scholar The papers discussed by French either appeared in the Essays and observations, or were transmitted to Pringle by Society members for publication by the Royal Society.

40 Sir John Pringle's nine volumes of manuscripts entitled Medical annotations, held at the Library of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, (hereafter RCPE) contain many excerpts from letters sent by his regular correspondents in Scotland, who included Whytt and Drs Thomas Simson, John Clerk, David Clerk, John Stevenson, John Gregory, John Stedman, Joseph Black, and Sir Alexander Dick. In London Pringle was friendly with Count Carburi, Franklin, Morton, and Donald Monro, and he met other Society members when they were in town. A disproportionate number of the datable letters to Pringle were written before the middle of the month and may well refer to discussions in the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, as eight clearly do.

41 Whytt, , op. cit. (38), pp. 207–8.Google Scholar

42 Essays and observations, physical and literary, Edinburgh, 1754, i, pp. vi–vii (hereafter EOPL).Google Scholar

43 Only Cullen, Black, and Ferguson seem to have taken Hume's views seriously to the extent that they devoted any discussion to them.

44 An early essay of Kames shows his commitment to civilizing the Highlands and contains the following rather revealing passage: ‘[There is] No Security for a man who would live independent; he is obliged to inlist himself into one or other clan … A Gentleman of the name of Grant, a Lieutenant in one of the Independant Companies, blundered out his true sentiments, that he would rather hear of the Grants stealing three cows, than of hearing one stole from them. This is savage …’. Abercairny MSs, SRO, MS. GD 24.1.550.15.

45 It is significant that Kames in the ‘Preliminary observations’ to part II of The gentleman farmer included a section on chemistry ‘that no farmer of education ought to be ignorant of’. The gentleman farmer, 5th edn., Edinburgh, 1802, pp. 313–82 (315).Google Scholar

46 Thomson, , op. cit. (6), i, 74.Google Scholar Kames was also a promoter of the British Linen Company which evolved into the British Linen Bank. This company not only advanced credit to producers but also helped to promote structural changes in the linen industry.

47 Ibid., i, 62.

48 Kames, to Cullen, William, 25 03 1753; op. cit. (6)Google Scholar: ‘I expect a great budget when my friend Dawson returns, for I long to hear how affairs go in your College. Muirhead, I hope, and Smith, will both contribute to fill this same budget, besides what I am to have from Simson and Dick’. This almost certainly refers to the Society. Dawson, Muirhead, and Martine may never have become members although Adam Smith did, probably after 1780.

49 Thomson, , op. cit. (6), i, 74.Google Scholar

50 Tor a discussion of Kames's role in putting Cullen in touch with the Board of Trustees see Donovan, , op. cit. (11), pp. 78–86.Google ScholarCullen, 's ‘Remarks on bleaching’Google Scholar may have prompted Alexander Lind to produce sometime before 1756 another paper on this subject which is now among the Cullen MSs, RCPE, Box 35, No. 26. It follows in this collection two essays by Home, Francis dated 22 06 1763Google Scholar, and entitled ‘An easy method of making the bleaching lye’, and ‘The method of recovering the salts from the old lye’. The dates suggest that these papers were not intended for the Philosophical Society, but any paper which Cullen sent to Kames in 1752–3 was likely to have found its way to this body.

51 Erlam, H. D., ‘Alexander Monro, primus’, University of Edinburgh journal, 1953–1954, 17, 77–105 (88).Google Scholar

52 Medical essays and observations, op. cit. (4). ‘Volume v’Google Scholar was published in two parts, each a separate tome containing many Philosophical Society papers.

53 Monro was one of the Honourable The Improvers of the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland, and an important member of the Select and Edinburgh Societies. He was also an FRS and later a foreign member of the Parisian Académie royale de chirurgie.

54 We cannot be sure he read any, but some of the political essays could have been no more inappropriate for this Society than was Robert Wallace's essay on ancient population. Among the Hume papers at the Royal Society of Edinburgh there are two which are likely to have been presented to the Society. Neither is clearly by Hume. For a discussion of these pieces see: Gossman, Lionel, ‘Two unpublished essays on mathematics in the Hume Papers’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1960, 21, 442–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 Cf. Manual, Frank E., The prophets of Paris, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, pp. 26–33Google Scholar; see also Smith, Adam, ‘The history of astronomy’, in The Glasgow edition of the works and correspondence of Adam Smith, iii, eds. by Wightman, W. P. D. and Bryce, J. C., Oxford, 1980, pp. 7–11, 33–105.Google Scholar

56 EOPL, i, pp. v–vi.Google Scholar

57 SirPringle, John to the Earl of Bute, 25 06 1762Google Scholar, Bute Papers, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute: ‘The Society has already published two volumes, and are about a third, under the title of Essays and Observations Physical & Literary by a Society of Edinburgh’.

58 Skene, David to Skene, Andrew, 18 12 1751, loc. cit. (36).Google Scholar

59 Black, Joseph to Black, John, 2 09 1755, Black MSs, EUL, MS. gen. 874. v.Google Scholar

60 Greig, J. Y. T. (ed.), The letters of David Hume, 2 vols., Oxford, 1969, i, 176.Google Scholar

61 ‘Reflections on the study of Chemistry & an essay towards ascertaining the different species of salts’. Drafts of these papers exist at the RCPE, one of which contains ‘Alterations and additions’ sent to Dr John Clerk; Cullen MSs, RCPE, Box 35, 8.

62 Clerk, David to Cullen, William, 23 01 1753Google Scholar (O.S.), Thompson, /Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6).Google Scholar

63 Thomson, op. cit. (6), i. 58–9.Google Scholar Black lived with a relative, James Russell, who was a Society member and the obvious source of his account.

64 Clerk, David to Cullen, William, 19 07 1755Google Scholar, Thomson, /Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6).Google Scholar

65 Cf. North, J. D., ‘Thomas Melville’, in Gillispie, C. C. (ed.), Dictionary of scientific biography, New York, 1974, ix, 266—7.Google Scholar

66 EOPL, vols. i and ii.Google Scholar

67 Erlam, , loc. cit. (51).Google Scholar Monro replaced Robert Whytt as Vice President but Whytt's association with the Society continued. Alexander Monro II shared the teaching duties of the Chair of Anatomy after 1755.

68 Cockburn, Henry A., ‘An account of the Friday Club …’, in Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, iii, 144–57Google Scholar; ‘Minutes of the Poker Club’, EUL, MS. DC 5.126: ‘This association consisted of almost all the literati of Edinburgh and the neighborhood (most of whom had been members of the Select Society), together with many country gentlemen who were indignant at the invidious line drawn between Scotland and England (on the establishment of militia regiments)’; ibid., f.2.

69 It may be worth noting in this context that a French translation of EOPL had been printed in Paris in 1759.

70 Cullen MSs, GUL, Box 3.15. The sort of book reviews Cullen had in mind are exemplified by a piece on Maupertuis' Essay de cosmologie, Leyden, 1751Google Scholar, now at ibid., Box 3.2. This was read to the Glasgow Literary Society on 16 January 1752; Coutts, James, A history of the University of Glasgow, Glasgow, 1909, p. 316.Google Scholar The June meetings probably did take place. Among the Whytt manuscripts at EUL, MS. DC 4.98 is an undated printed letter among papers from 1760–62 which reads:

We are appointed by the Philosophical Society, to remind you, that all the members, who choose to favour them with any discourse, or paper, ought to enter into engagements for that purpose, some time this summer, and to name the month in the ensuing year, on which they propose, that their paper shall be ready. As the Society has a just sense of your ability to execute any undertaking of this nature, you will not be backward in contributing to their entertainment and instructions; and that, some time before the first Thursday in — next, you will inform them, either by a letter to us, or any other member, at what time you can undertake to transmit or read to them a discourse on any philosophical subject. We are SIR your most obedient and humble servants

Alexander Monro David Hume

Secretaries

71 Cited from typescript translation by W. M. Smallwood, in Walker MSs, EUL, MS La III. 352.1. Smallwood published excerpts from the correspondence of Walker and Linnaeus in the Scientific monthly, 1939, 44, 65–70.Google Scholar By 1764 Walker and other Society members were involved with a society for the importation of foreign seeds, plants, and trees; Horn, D. B. MSs, loc. cit. (35)Google Scholar, Box 4, Miscellaneous Notes, 13 April 1770; see also Scots magazine, 1764, 26, 83Google Scholar; 1765, 27, 395–6; 1766, 28, 614; 1768. 30, 134–6. Benjamin Franklin had earlier been in correspondence with John Hope, to whom he sent seeds; see Larabee, L. W. et al. (eds.), The papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven, 1960–, xii, 85.Google Scholar

72 Klibansky, Raymond and Mossner, Ernest C. (eds.), New letters of David Hume, Oxford, 1969, p. 66.Google Scholar

73 The total number of papers given in Table 1 is not equal to this figure because not all are datable, and because some were not printed.

74 Franklin, Benjamin to Kames, Lord, 21 02 1765Google Scholar; Larabee, et al. (eds.), op. cit. (71), viii, 316.Google Scholar Franklin's letter also notes that he sent a collection of his books to the Society: others had been received in 1760–61, and in 1763; ibid., ix, 228; x, 384–6.

75 EOPL, iii, Nos. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

76 Philosophical transactions, 1757–1758, 50, 50, 392–5.Google Scholar Whytt sent this papers to SirPringle, John on 1 12 1757Google Scholar, the probable date of the Society's Annual business meeting, noting that it had been given to him a few days earlier. A discussion of the paper with Franklin is recorded in Pringle, 's Medical annotations, op. cit. (40), iv, 72Google Scholar; Hume, , loc. cit. (72)Google Scholar; EOPL, ii, No. 6; iii, Nos. 6, 8.Google Scholar

77 In 1759–60 Franklin sent Sir Alexander Dick some advice on a damper and he seems earlier to have discussed smoky chimneys with some of the members; Larabee, et al. (eds.), op. cit. (71), viii.Google Scholar

78 EOPL, ii, No. 36; iii, No. 9Google Scholar; Philosophical transactions, 1755–1766, 49, 387–90, 509–11, 521–3.Google Scholar

79 It is clear from the meteorological data published as a preface to EOPL, iiiGoogle Scholar, and in the Scots magazine (eg., 1748, 10, 191) that Society members continued to record rainfall, temperatures, and barometric readings. The Hawkhill recordings appear to have been made at the residence of Lord Alemore by James Lind, who used some instruments made by Alexander Wilson, the Glasgow professor of astronomy. In 1766 George Clerk requested meteorological data from Alexander Small in London who informed him of published meteorological data and retailed scientific news Clerk is likely to have passed on to his colleagues. Earlier studies on heat and its measurement remained of interest in the Society. Small, to Clerk, , 2 01 1766Google Scholar, SRO, MS. GD 18/5492. Brownrigg, William to Cullen, William, 6 09 1761Google Scholar, also contains weather information; Cullen MSs, GUL, Box 11. See also ibid; Box 3.21, and EUL, MS. Gen. 1087, p. 9, for information on instruments received by William Cullen.

80 Some of these papers were undoubtedly used in debates at the Select Society (1754), or referred to discussions in its improving offshoot, the Edinburgh Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Sciences, Manufactures and Agriculture, founded in March 1755. Since the Select Society had not lasted for the time Sir Alexander mentioned and did not stress ‘Collections of facts & circumstances’, other papers on similar topics probably were presented to the Philosophical Society. Dick almost certainly read to the philosophers his accounts of the ‘true rhubarb’ for whose introduction into Britain he received a Royal Society of Arts gold medal in 1774.

81 Bute, Papers, loc. cit. (57).Google Scholar

82 Loc. cit. (71).

83 Loc. cit. (81).

84 Morgan, John to SirDick, Alexander, 1 11 1763Google Scholar, Morgan-Dick Letters American Philosophical Society Library, B M82.1. This letter is a copy from the Prestonfield Collection of papers which seems to be lost.

85 For a discussion of eighteenth-century Scottish paper-making see Clow, and Clow, , op. cit. (11), pp. 256–68.Google Scholar

86 In addition to the 19 papers, at least, represented by the essays published by the Monros in EOPL, others were printed elsewhere. Alexander Monro III in the biographical memoir of his father printed in his Essays and heads of lectures … with a memoir of his life, Edinburgh, 1840Google Scholar, writes of a paper on the gravid uterus with ‘the illustrative figures, delineated and engraved by Mr. Thomas Donaldson, with the preparations from which they were executed … demonstrated to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, on the 17th of November 1763; and in January 1767, [Alexander Monro II] read to them his Remarks on the Lungs’. This, as we know from a letter of William Cullen to William Hunter (n.d.), was a well-attended meeting at which Monro probably discussed other ‘anatomical preparations and drawings’ as well; Thomson, , op. cit. (6), i, 561–2.Google Scholar In 1764 Alexander Monro II read ‘a paper on the communication of the ventricles [of the brain] with each other, and on their supposed communication with the medulla spinalis, with some remarks on the hydrocephalus and spina bifida, and on tapping in these diseases, illustrated with figures’, Essays and heads, ibid., pp. xlvi, 56, 107.

87 Alexander Monro I is represented by EOPL, iGoogle Scholar, Nos. 16, 20, 21; ii, Nos. 19, 24, 26, 27. Alexander Monro II by EOPL, iGoogle Scholar, No. 18; ii, Nos. 17, 18; Monro, Donald by EOPL, iGoogle Scholar, No. 17; ii, No. 30.

88 EOPL, ii, No. 21.Google Scholar

89 EOPL, ii, No. 29.Google Scholar

90 EOPL, ii, Nos. 8, 12, 14, 15; iii, Nos. 14, 15, 16, 30.Google Scholar

91 EOPL, iiiGoogle Scholar, No. 11; i, No. 22. Ebenezer Gilchrist's ‘Account of a very infectious distemper …’ says that ‘this paper is to be published in a sheet, and dispersed among the lower class of people in this part of the country, where information is desired, it is written in a plain manner, and the terms are explained in words most familiar to them.’ No such broadside seems to survive.

92 Donovan, , op. cit. (11), pp. 93–110.Google Scholar

93 Ibid., pp. 116–26.

94 Ibid., pp. 183–249.

95 Yarwood, Doreen, Robert Adam, New York, 1970, p. 158.Google Scholar

96 The experiments reported by Francis Home in the Philosophical transactions on the preservation of foodstuffs with lime-water are dated 6 April 1753, a day later than the regularly scheduled Society meeting for that month. Similar experiments conducted by Alston and Pringle are reported in the Philosophical Transactions, 1751–1752, 47, 480–8, 525–34, 550–8.Google Scholar

97 Alston's surviving papers at EUL, MS. La III.375, contain many letters which could have been, and some which were, read to the Society (EOPL, ii.Google Scholar No. 10). Among his correspondents were William Crow, John Lining, Alexander Garden, William Brownrigg, and William Cullen, who were Society members, and John Fothergill and Stephen Hales who seem not to have been members. Some of Alston's ‘Solitary experiments’ were written up in a rather informal way which suggests they were meant to be presented to the Society before they were printed; EUL, MS. La III. 375. f54. The papers of John Walker at EUL, MS. La III. 352. 1–5; DC. 2. 39. 1–2, contain many short natural history pieces some of which perhaps relate to the Society's botanical work. For similar materials compiled by John Hope, see Fletcher, Harold R. and Brown, William H., The Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 1670–1970, Edinburgh, 1970, pp. 59–67.Google Scholar

98 By 1768 this Society was employing a collector in Quebec and by the time it failed in 1770 it had had correspondence with botanists and collectors in Russia, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy, Quebec, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Jamaica, and various Far Eastern posts where Scottish surgeons were stationed with either the East India Company or the navy. The Society was noticed in the Scots magazine, 1765, 27, 395Google Scholar; 1766, 28, 614; 1768, 30, 134–6. There are numerous letters concerning it from John Hope to Lord Loudoun in the Loudoun Papers, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, Green Deed Box, 1764–1770.

99 EOPL, i, No. 9.Google Scholar

100 EUL, John Walker MSs, DC. 2. 39. 1–2. Another botanical paper on ‘Translation of plants’ to be read to the Society is mentioned in a letter of Walker to Cullen, William, 22 02 1763Google Scholar; Cullen/Thomson MSs, loc. cit. (6).

101 Philosophical transactions, 1769, 59, 241–6.Google Scholar This letter is dated 4 May 1769.

102 Edinburgh astronomers reported no observations of the transit of Venus in 1761. Bad weather and the lack of good instruments may have been responsible for this. Light is shed upon the frustration felt by some members by a letter of Walker, John to Cullen, William, 22 02 1763Google Scholar: ‘I have summoned up my Resolution however, & written this Day to Ld Kaims a very long letter upon a very short Subject, which I beg youll take a Look of, & suppress, if you do not think proper to be read to the Society. I really think Morton should be applied to for the Sum he alotted to ye Observatory, if he grants it, it is well, if not, I would see no Harm in having another President’, Thomson/Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6). Morton had received thanks in 1740 for a donation to the observatory which MacLaurin was then seeking to have built at the University.

103 Philosophical transactions, 1759–1760, 51, 232–74Google Scholar; 1766, 66, 66–7.

104 EOPL, i. No. 6.Google Scholar

105 These are discussed in North, op. cit. (65), and in Schofield, Robert, Mechanism and materialism: British natural philosophy in an age of reason, Princeton, 1970, pp. 243–4.Google Scholar Schofield finds these papers to be remarkable because they contain ‘the first motions-forces phenomena study of optics to appear since Newton's own work … a testable theory, based on deductions from motions and forces … and one of the earliest British references to Boscovich.’ They were published in EOPL, iiGoogle Scholar, No. 4, and in Philosophical transactions, 1753–1754, 48, 261–70.Google Scholar

106 See n. 64, above.

107 Melville, Thomas to Cullen, William, 21 02 1752Google Scholar; Thomson, /Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6).Google Scholar The letter ends with comments about books just published, or about to be published, by Thomas Simson, Thomas Blackwell, and Robert Wallace, and with the note ‘When you are making no use of my paper you may give it to Dr. [Robert] Dick’ (the Glasgow professor of natural philosophy).

108 Ross, , op. cit. (32), pp. 359–62.Google Scholar Ross also discussed Kames's metaphysical and natural philosophical views, ibid., pp. 60–6 and 173–7.

109 EOPL, iGoogle Scholar, Nos. 1, 2. Stewart's paper, ‘Some remarks on the laws of motion, and the inertia of matter’, has a title which suggests he was the critic.

110 Reid, Thomas to Kames, Lord, 19 05 1780Google Scholar, in SirHamilton, William (ed.), Thomas Reid: philosophical works, 2 vols., Hildesheim, 1967, i, 54.Google Scholar

111 Thomas, Reid to Kames, Lord, 10 1782Google Scholar; quoted in Ross, , op. cit. (32), p, 361.Google Scholar

112 Ibid., p. 64.

113 Thomas, Reid to Kames, Lord, 16 12 1780Google Scholar, in works, op. cit. (110), pp. 56–60.Google Scholar

114 Ibid., p. 59.

115 For a discussion of the positions adopted by Kames, David Hume, and Dr. John Stewart with respect to Newtonianism, see the forthcoming book by Wright, John entitled, The sceptical realism of David Hume.Google Scholar

116 EOPL, iiGoogle Scholar, No. 9; iii, Nos. 2, 3.

117 Home, Henry, Kames, Lord, Progress of flax-husbandry in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1766Google Scholar; The gentleman farmer: being an attempt to improve agriculture by subjecting it to the test of rational principles, Edinburgh, 1776.Google Scholar

118 Larabee, et al. (eds.), op. cit. (71), xvi, 3.Google Scholar

119 See the article, ‘Fermier’.

120 The Cullen papers held at GUL contain many letters and some essays dealing with agriculture, but those which are later than 1755 probably relate to the work of the Edinburgh Society and not to the Philosophical Society.

121 Philosophical transactions, 1762, 52, 1–3.Google Scholar

122 EOPL, iii, No. 9.Google Scholar

123 Philosophical transactions 1755–1756, 49, 387–91, 521–23Google Scholar; EOPL, ii, No. 36.

124 Whetstone, Anne, Scottish county government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Edinburgh, 1981, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

125 Scott, Hew, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 7 vols., Edinburgh, 1917, i, 151fGoogle Scholar; EUL, Buchan MSs, MS. Gen. 1429/16.2.

126 James Stirling Papers, Garden House, Buchlyvie, Stirlingshire. I am grateful to the present owner of the papers, James Stirling, Esq., both for the opportunity of seeing them, and for his permission to quote from them in this paper.

127 This piece is contained in ‘Coppy Book of L’, and is entitled ‘Of Almamons Measure of a Degree’. Its first lines read, At this time when the learned seem to be taken up with the figure of the earth, I hope it will not be amiss to give an account of the mensuration of a degree, which was made at the beginning of the ninth century, by the Astonomer Almamon great Caliph of Babylon, who was not only the greatest encourager of all kinds of learning, but he himself reckoned among the most learned men of his time, as well as the greatest prince of the flourishing family of the Abasides.

128 Reid, Thomas to Kames, Lord, 29 12 1762Google Scholar, Abercairny MSs, SRO, MS. GD/24.1.569. Something rather like what Reid called for, but based on the price of selected provisions rather than the weight of silver per pound sterling, is included in Arnot, Hugh's The history of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1789, pp. 90–101.Google Scholar

129 William Wilkie to William Cullen, MD (c1759); Thomson/Cullen MSs, GUL, 2255.

130 A letter from John Morgan to Sir Alexander Dick written from Rome on 16 June 1764 contains a thinly veiled request for membership in the Philosophical Society. Morgan had recently been made an associé of the Parisian Academy of Surgery, and was later to become a member of the Arcadia Society at Rome (1764), and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1765); Morgan, John to SirDick, Alexander, 20 02 1764 and 16 06 1764Google Scholar; Morgan-Dick Letters, American Philosophical Society Library.

131 See Hunter, Andrew (ed.), Georgical essays, 5 vols., 1771–1777Google Scholar. Dr James Ainslie contributed essays on marle to this set of agricultural papers and to EOPL, iii. No. 1.

132 Ross, , op. cit. (32), pp. 216–18.Google Scholar

133 van Swieten to Dr. John Clerk, n.d; Skene MS, AUL, MS. 38.117.

134 Morgan, , loc. cit. (130)Google Scholar; Harding, Julia Morgan (ed.), The journal of Dr. John Morgan … from Rome … to London, 1764, Philadelphia, 1907.Google Scholar

135 Walker, John at Moffat in 1762Google Scholar, and Wark, David at Haddington in 1757.Google Scholar

136 At the University of Glasgow: Joseph Black, Thomas Reid, Alexander Stevenson, John Robison, William Irvine; at the University of St Andrews: William Wilkie; at the University of Edinburgh: James Russel, John Robison, Adam Ferguson, John Walker, John Hope, William Cullen, Joseph Black, and Alexander Monro II.

137 This information is taken from the author's unpublished study of eighteenth-century Scottish university patronage.

138 Ross, , op. cit. (32), p. 92.Google Scholar

139 John Ramsay of Ochtertyre MSs, National Library Library of Scotland hereafter (NLS), MS. 1635/2, p. 1379.

140 Bisset, Andrew (ed.), Memoirs and papers of Sir Andrew Michell, K.B., 2 vols., London, 1850, i, 64.Google Scholar

141 Donovan, , op. cit. (11), pp. 67–70.Google Scholar

142 Black worked occasionally for Charles and James Erskine after 1759. James Erskine, Andrew Crosbie, and John Roebuck were interested in mining ventures throughout this period and in 1760 Erskine asked Andrew Mitchell to procure information for him on the Breslau cobalt works. Erskine-Murray Papers, NLS, MS. 5098.

143 Hamilton, , op. cit. (32), p. 140Google Scholar; Black MSs, loc. cit. (59), 873.1.12.

144 For a discussion of the limited effectiveness of their work see, Smith, Annette M., ‘The administration of the forfeited annexed estates, 1752–1784’, in Barrow (ed.), op. cit. (28), pp. 198–210.Google Scholar

145 The value of linen stamped in Scotland rose between 1750 and 1768 from £362,000 to £600,000, and increased from 7,600,000 to 11,800,000 yards.

146 Bisset, , op. cit. (140), pp. 69–72Google Scholar. Murdoch, Patrick to Forbes, John, 16 05 1754Google Scholar, also praises Mitchell for his usage of MacLaurin and others; Culloden Papers, NLS, MS. 2968.

147 Ross, , op. cit. (32), pp. 75–97.Google Scholar

148 Horn MSs, loc. cit. (35).Google Scholar

149 Monro, Alexander I to Cullen, William, 6 09 1755Google Scholar, and another of no date probably written during the same week; Thomson/Cullen MSs, loc. cit. (6).

150 These appointments are studied by Sher, , op. cit. (32).Google Scholar

151 Scottish patronage in this period is discussed by Simpson, John M., ‘Who steered the gravy train, 1707–1766?’, in Phillipson, N. T. and Mitchison, Rosalind (eds.), Scotland in the age of improvement, Edinburgh, 1970, pp. 47–72Google Scholar. Simpson under-estimates the influence which these men had on minor patronage such as university posts, clerical livings, and other jobs which did not relate to parliamentary politics, or to livings in the gift of the government. See also Murdoch, , op. cit. (32), pp. 85–124.Google Scholar

152 Argyll lacks a biography but there is a great deal about his agricultural, improving, and mechanical interests in Lindsay, Ian G. and Cosh, Mary, Inveraray and the Dukes of Argyll, Edinburgh, 1973, part 1, pp. 1–185.Google Scholar

153 Daniel Roche has brilliantly described the French academies in the most important work yet published on the provincial enlightenment, Le Sècle des lumières en province: académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789, 2 vols., Paris, 1978.Google Scholar

154 Mackenzie, Henry, ‘William Tytler’, in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1798, 4, Appendix, pp. 17–34(18).CrossRefGoogle Scholar