THE SIX POUND BLUE FISH

I was obsessed with the sea, with boats and especially fishing from the time I was a small child.  I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps it was  a result of me being born and raised on the Atlantic sea shore where what we called “fresh air” was the scent of the sea breeze, and sea fog and fog horns were common night sounds. 

My early life played out within a short walk of Gravesend Bay, and the “Narrows”—the busy port entry between Brooklyn and Staten Island.  On the Bay’s shore, I would clamber down among the the gray rip-rap where Atlantic sea waves crashed on windy days. Or fish from a sea splashed rocky perch while watching coastal ships or foreign freighters enter NY Harbor or anchor in Gravesend to await a vacant dock along the Manhattan shore.  

At night, sea fogs often enveloped our house. Thick fogs stilled night sounds by muffling all near-by night traffic noises, but a freighter’s mournful fog horns a mile off shore pierced the mists and rattled the loose glass in my bedroom window.  Then too on these nights, the clanging bell of the Narrow’s channel buoy could be heard loud and clear. 

But if that was not enough, each summer, as a boy, I spent at least two months on Long Island’s North Shore. There too I was only a short bare-foot walk from the sea shore. Not the salty Atlantic, but the inland sea-way of Long Island Sound and the Nissequogue River estuary— a tidal inlet in Smithtown Bay. 

There a boy fascinated with fishing could walk to the Nissequogue’s rock-strewn sandy edge where a half mile wide river flowed through green forest to reach the blue water Sound. At full ebb tide, a wonderland of sea life eposed itself for a boy’s discovery.  

As one approached Fiddler-Crabs scurried across still wet and pebbly beach-sand sawing their outsized pincer claws as they raced to their excavations to disappear into their neat round holes with its associated sand pile.  Farther out where sand gave way to an exposed river bed of pebbles and cobbles, one could turn over half-buried barnacle-encrusted glacially rounded rocks, coated in green sea laver, or crinkly-brown-bladder wrack. Underneath, diverse “zoophyla” life wriggled and crawled when exposed to air and light.  

Beneath the raised rock sea worms, called “Blood worms” and many legged “Bristle” polychaete sandworms wriggled in displeasure. Perhaps too there was a part-buried lump of a Quahog shell to be dug up, or the spitting siphon of a Soft-Shell clam, and often a tiny gray shrimp or hermit crab hauling an oversized spiraled drill shell would scurry away when the rock was lifted. These critters were easily collected and dumped into an old “Dinty Moore” tin can with a handful of bladder wrack to keep the lively collection from climbing out.  

With the bait pail emitting scratchy sounds of fiddlers attempting escape, a boy could walk only a few paces up stream to a bend in the River. There, sand deposited by river tidal currents is piled up around fallen timbers of an ancient dock . The old wood, streaked with rust from ancient wrought iron spikes, was blackened with time and sea- smoothed, its grainy knotty wood lay partly entombed in sand and pebble. 

Emerging from the bed of sand the timbers extended upward on a slope as if to point to the far wooded shore. One wide timber extended a good ten feet out over the water into the river’s deeper channel bed.  A young boy could clamber over its slippery surface, to sit, with wet breeches, and cast a hand-line into—for him— “fishy looking” river water. 

These old timbers were the the base of an ancient (18^th century) dock…long gone then, which two centuries ago served as a ferry pier to carry horse drawn carriages across to the Smith Estate in  Nissequogue.  Now only a forgotten wreck, just seen as an obstacle to boaters, but well serving the needs of a young boy’s fishing passion.  

Fishing on a wreck of an 18^th century dock timber one only needed a 30 foot hank of twisted cuttyhunk linen line, a gray and battered 2 oz lead weight and two red thread snelled, long-shanked, flounder hooks. All of which could be rolled up and carried in a boy’s back pocket.

Using an old, rusted blade of folding pocket knife with one  deer-horn handle-scale missing, the dark haired boy opened the hard shell clam, and sliced away parts of its tough muscular “foot”. He threaded this carefully onto one hook. On the other, he impaled a wiggling red and brown (polychaete) sandworm.   In the painfull process the worm’s two pointed black, sharply curved pincers opened and closed—too close to the boy’s water wrinkled fingers—or so the boy thought.

The end of the twisted linen fish line was tied to a rusted spike, and then carefully laid out in coil-on-top-of-coil on the water smoothed black oak timber.  Taking the baited line in hand and with a swing of an a boy’s arm and a flick of his sun tanned wrist the 2oz weight with its following line sailed gracefully out over the water to curve then  splash down carrying the white lumps of baited hooks to sink through clear blue and green and disappear below the surface. Where unknown finny creatures—or so the boy thought— were sure to be.  But at the surface—all that was visible now—was tiny patch of foam drifting down current where the taut line at the surface which created a wavy “v” ripple in the blue-green flood.

Held gently between wet and water wrinkled thumb and forefinger, the tight line trembled and vibrated as the 3oz lead rolled and bumped along on the pebble bottom. Then it held firm, perhaps wedged against a barnacled rock. The boy held the line taut and imagined his two baits, rigged well above the lead, swirling attractively—seductively—in the river current just above the waving sea laver weed coated bottom. 

Was there a Black Sea Bass, a winter Flounder, or a Scup near-by?  The fascination of fishing is that no one knows. The only information available to the fisherman (person) is unseen and comes only by way of tiny vibrations, minor tugs and bumps which must be interpreted by the feel in the hand. 

Is that tug, the lead weight rolling down current, or a marauding Blue Claw or Calico crab? Will the lead hold the baits in place, just above the bottom? Or will the current drag it off in an upstream arc, into shallows? Will the baits hang on?  

The boys knees pressed into the wood, and the the rising tide rose higher along the old sloping  timbers. A Horse Fly landed on the boy’s arm attracted by bait scents and dampness— and began to bite. It elicited  a sharp slap with the free hand..that missed the fly but rattled the hand. 

Was that a little tug? 

Then there was another..a little more distinct. Something was nibbling…mouthing the bait!

Did this require a full arm to jerk upward fast to set the hook? 

Then a great pull…the line went alive!  It slipped rapidly through the boy’s wet fingers—warming the skin. The boy’s hand jerked upward to set the hook—too late. 

But his arm could rise only part way!  Mid way upward  a heavy weight on the end of the line prevented a full arc of the boy’s arm.  Line streamed out of the hand, and the last few coils flew off the timbers.

The boy stood up, the line wrapped around his fist making white lines across the knuckles. The living, struggling weight opposed him— pulling the line upstream then down. Then just twenty feet away a fish splashed out of the water. 

A sleek, blue sided fish….leaped from the surface, water streaming off its glistening sides and  a red-shanked flounder hook hanging precariously from the side of its jaw, while a second one with a white chunk of clam bait rattled against its gill cover.

It dove once more and turned hard. The line slid through the boy’s hand…fast… then went limp. 

The live weight was gone!

The boy sat down on the wet timber. 

That was his first fish….there would be untold many more..some many times bigger, and in far off waters…but it was that, maybe six or eight pound blue fish which would never be caught or ever, ever be forgotten.

It’s memory remains as clear today as it was fifty years ago! 

    

ABOMINABLE LEAF BLOWER, DIRTIES AIR MORE THAN A TRUCK: NOISE, RAKING, AND AN OLD TREE

Can you believe it? Leaf blowers generate more pollution in a few hours than a pick up truck on a long trip!

Today, April 18th 2025, is sunny, warm and mild, so far, one of the nicest days of spring. But any attempt at enjoying the sun and balmy breezes were shattered by my neighbor’s roaring, leaf blower. This is “spring clean up” time, and pesky remnant leaves from fall must be blown off grassy lawns struggling for sunlight.  The same noisy leaf blowers irritate the ears in fall. In winter my neighbor unleashes his overpowered just as noisy snow blower on his neighbors.  Today, the decibel levels set off the alarm on my Apple Watch. I had to retreat to the semi quiet of the stuffy interior.

As a young boy, a resident of New Utrecht, of one of the six original Dutch colonial villages in Brooklyn NY, there were no leaf blowers to rattle the windows and jangle the nervous systems of the elderly.  Of course, we had no trees or remnant forests to produce leaves.  Only one tree graced, old Main Street of New Utrecht. It was a magnificent, century old, scaly-barked Sycamore (Plantanus occidentalis) or Plane Tree.  It was known locally as “Ma Perkin’s Tree”, but no one in the neighborhood remembered who old “Ma” Perkins was..but that was “her”tree.  Since this area of New Utrecht had once been farm fields where wheat oats and rye grains were grown, one had to assume this old tree must have once shaded the Perkin’s farm house. 

In my youth the tree stood crowded-in on all sides by two-story, attached, 1920s-era, working-class homes. Its huge crown towered over the neighboring houses and its massive roots tipped up near-by concrete sidewalk slabs into a foot tangling obstacle course. Its low horizontal branches encouraged young tree climbers (me and my friends) up into sun dappled greenery far above the asphalt.  Below, its cool shade made a fine place for the older residents to set up a folding chair on hot summer days. But being a deciduous tree, its leaves served only part of the year, and dropped off as cold weather approached.  In fall it let down almost all at once it dry, brown-crinkly leaves, as if to reaffirm the primacy of nature to all those living in an alien concrete urban world. The fall of leaves marked the season that summer’s heat was gone, and that  Ma Perkin’s tree no longer needed (or could afford) leaves when cold weather was on the way. 

By early October brown leaves carpeted the concrete walks and “stoops” all around the old tree’s swollen, gnarly trunk. Brisk fall winds drove the leaves into unkempt piles against curbs, sidewalks, and brick garden walls.  From there, homeowners quietly raked them up into curb-side, knee-high, dry-brown, crinkly dry piles, kids loved to kick apart. 

Old Dutch traditions prized neat and well swept side walks. But neat leaf piles can’t stay in place where kid’s games and unpredictable winds hold sway. The traditional Dutch solution was to quickly and simply burn the piles to gray white ash.  Elderly  rakers stood guard, long rake in hand like Prometheus over his gifted smokey fire, pushing errant leaves into the leaping flame. The fragrant gray smoke rose up in the cool air to drift off to the southwest over Gravesend Bay a mile away. These “fall fires” burned on every tree-lined street, all part of the ancient rites of fall. 

But by the 1960s, State and City Fathers soon put an end to these atavistic activities. Fearing  conflagrations and polluted the air open fires were outlawed in old New Utrecht. New City rules required leaf piles to remain in place (but they didn’t obey) to be eventually  swept up by roaring Department of Sanitation vacuum trucks.  Kids and old folks missed the silent, calming fires, and the fragrant fall leaf smoke too. 

(Did I leave out the fact that the fires served another purpose too.  Some of us would roast a spud, (lifted from the wicker potato basket at the corner grocery store) by burying it down in the ashes of  Mr Nelson’s smoldering leaf fire to roast into a “mickey” (a reference to the Irish? I did it once. But took my potato from home.) Also we had no aluminum foil—so the potato went into the hot ashes bare of protection. (Aluminum foil though available, came into common household use much later..It was so rare than many folks actually saved aluminum foil coming off gum and food wrappers by rolling it into a ball to keep for some later use.)

After a game of stick ball, we returned to retrieve our “mickeys”.  Using the tip end of a stickball bat we rolled the blackened, smoking-hot “mickeys” out of still-hot embers. Tommy Macrone, the only “Mick” we had in the gang, juggled the hot potato in his hands, then broke it open to expose the steaming, creamy-white interior. It tasted of burnt potato skin, smoke and ash, but every one swore how great it was to eat a hot mickey sitting on the sidewalk curb in approaching dark under Ma Perkin’s tree.  

There were no leaf blowers in those days..the standard metal-spring rake was all we had.  And as well, in winter, the common coal shovel came out from the basement repurposed,  but with a coat of slippery candle wax, to shovel snow. (No noisy snow blowers either!)  Today raking leaves and shoveling snow are almost as unknown “skills” as writing in script, driving a stick shift car, or using a “skate key” to tighten metal roller skates to your leather shoes.

Today we are imposed on by the neighbor with his noisy leaf blower.   

As I sat there listening to the growl of my neighbor’s abominable machine, and wondered was this noisy newcomer to the fall (and spring) seasons such an advantage?  

Ma Perkin’s tree grew a several hundred thousand lovely five lobed, light green leaves with fuzzy undersurfaces. They grew in the summer sunlight formed by drawing CO2 gas out of the surrounding air and combining it with water drawn up by roots from under those slabs of sidewalk concrete.  When in fall the leaves died and fell to ground, (and were burned by Mr Nelson, my neighbor) the CO2 and water that comprised those leaves flowed right back into the air. 

Burning leaves is a simple “put and take proposition” leaves take carbon out of air and fires put the same carbon back into the air.  In burning leaves we add no additional carbon derived from fossil fuel to the air to cause a build up of carbon dioxide to exacerbate global warming.  OK, there were a few tiny bits of carbon ash which drift up into the murky N.Y City sky, but those motes of dust do not reside long in air and soon sink or get incorporated into cloud and rain drops to fall back to earth. 

One could reasonably conclude that mechanical leaf-blowing may not be such a big advantage over simply following ancient traditions and burning those dry brown leaves—and roasting a few mickeys. They provided our elders with a pleasant fall season objective—rake up those leaves— and kids gained so much as well.  I conclude that—ignoring possible threats of conflagration—burning a few leaves each fall might be just as good a clean up solution. Certainly better than noisy leaf blowers.

Leaf blowers became popular in the late 1980s. By 1989 manufactures of leaf blowers sold a million of these abominable noise makers.  Today leaf blower manufacturers constitute a $35 billion dollar a year industry, (2023 data) which is expected to swell to more than $50 billion by 2029. Assuming a life span of ten years for the abominable machines, over the  approximate  36 year history of this industry from 1989 to the present period, there may be more than 20 million of these noisy machines in operation.  About 41 million Canadians are claimed to have about  2.5 million in use in that nation.

 

Most leaf blowers are powered by a 2-cycle (2-stroke) engine which uses gasoline laced with thick motor oil to lubricate its cylinders. Thus, besides the noise,  they produce a great volume of air pollution as well.   Four cycle gasoline (petrol, essence) models are little better. 

*About a decade ago a professional study by Edmonds Insideline.com of air-pollution generated by leaf blowers reported that 2 cycle leaf blowers generated more pollutants than a 2011 Ford 150 SVT Raptor pickup truck!   The investigators  analysed for pollutants such as: nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide —NO, NO3 and CO —as well as organic droplet particulates.  The authors at Edmonds concluded that one had to drive the Ford 150 pickup more than 3,000 miles to produce the same amount of pollution generated by a 2 cycle leaf blower operating for a half hour of yard work!   

It’s noteworthy that the unburned fuel in leaf blower emissions are the main source of smog the infamous California particulate pollution that made breathing air in California valleys a threat to life.  

Thus approximately 20 million leaf blowers operating for many noisy hours per day across our land are not only making life less pleasant with their ear splitting noise, but are also producing massive amounts of lung searing air pollutants. 

Perhaps, it’s time to go back to the good old spring rake, and that small fragrant fall curbside fire of dry leaves, with wisps of gray smoke-trails rising through a blue sky in Godly silence. 

Sometimes there is no better way than the old tried and true way. 

*See edmonds.com “Leaf blower emissions dirtier than high performance pick-up truck’s says Edmonds’Insideline.com” 

  

SCOTLAND— A PLACE, A TIME, AND A MAN—JAMES HUTTON GEOLOGIST

HUTTON AND SCOTLAND 

A MAN AND PLACE OF THEIR TIME

James Hutton, son of Scotland, wealthy dilettante-yes—but scientist extraordinaire who first established the then unimaginable antiquity of the Earth and from Scotland’s hills its weathered soils and outcrops comes the understanding of the unchanging earth processes that formed it! 

WHY IN SCOTLAND?

EUROPE’S  “GRAND CANYON” OF GEOLOGY.

When you look at a colored  geological map of Scotland you get the impression of a giant multilayered rocky sandwich. The map pattern suggests Scotland’s geology is the result of some earth force, directed from the northwest, which compressed diverse blocks of crust to form the Scottish land mass.  The stripped rock pattern exposes a rock-history spread out horizontally over that small nation’s 30 thousand square miles of area.  

The view of is geologically analogous to peering down  into Arizona’s 2k square mile Grand Canyon. Though Scotland presents a more complete rock-history record as well as older rocks. Scotland's oldest basement rocks (Lewisian Gneiss) at 3 billion years old, are more than a billion years older than the Grand Canyon’s Vishnu Schist (dated at 1.8 BY). 

The concept of Scotland as a “horizontal Grand Canyon” is not  far from the actual history. Scotland is the direct result of “plate tectonics” wherein seven major earth crustal plates move over the earth surface to clump together to form supercontinents, which then break apart in a continual assembly/disassembly of land masses over a long term 600 million year cycle.  

Scotland was formed as a result of this tectonic process wherein a hodgepodge of diverse earth crust fragments were rafted to Scottish shores from afar, to be pasted up against England and Wales over a period of millions of years.  These varied “chunks of earth crust” were accreted to the European continent  by the steady flow of new ocean crust forming in the Atlantic Ocean to west of Scotland at the Mid Atlantic Ridge where new ocean crust is continually formed. The result was a highly varied terrane…more varied and more complete a record than that of the Grand Canyon which is a record on one area of the North American Continent.

Thus Scotland is the result of moving blocks of 2 to 6 mile thick earth crust over the underlying, hot, soft and yielding Earth Mantle at the rate at which human fingernails grow (that is: @ one or two centimeters per year). The slow but steady process has been on-going much of Earth’s 4.5 billion year (BY) long history.  

Trekking in Scotland from south to north one passes through the Upland Terrane, over the Southern Upland Fault, thence into the Midland Valley Terrane, over the Midland Boundary Fault, and into the Grampian Highland Terrane, over the  ( so obvious straight line) of the Great Glen Fault, and into the Northern Highland Terrane, and finally over the Moline Thrust Fault, into the most northerly Hebridean Terrane. 

   

Exposures of metamorphic rocks which date from the Precambrian Era occur in Scotland as well as sedimentary rocks which represent nearly the entire  suite of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic Era rocks. The Paleozoic is represented by Cambrian and Ordovician period limestones in the NW highlands; Silurian sandstones in the southern uplands; and further southeast, Devonian sandstones; beyond these are Carboniferous mudstones and limestones, and Permian sandstones.  The Mesozoic Era is represented with Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous sandstones and mudstones.  Cenozoic deposits occur as well.  Through all of these rock sequences one encounters intrusions of Paleozoic volcanic igneous rocks.

Scotland is a relatively a small nation only about the size of South Carolina, but with an almost unrivaled panoply of rock ages and rock types available for observation and study in such a restricted area. 

But not only did Scotland possess a varied geology.  In the 18th century, Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland also had a well trained, talented citizenry interested in investigating these natural offerings. Furthermore  citizenry of Edinburgh were wealthy enough to have— free time for inquiry,—and a communion of interested individuals devoted to empirical investigation, rationalism, and free thinking.  As Edinburghers they were well supported with civilian infrastructure such as meeting halls, specialized clubs, literary and scientific publications and well stocked libraries where the introduction and exchange of new ideas could occur, be evaluated and discussed.  

SCOTTISH AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT (1707-1800)

The 18th century was a period of dramatic growth in ideas and technology. The closing of the human mind to inquiry that took place after the collapse of the Roman Empire ushered in the “Dark Ages” a period when myth, tradition, ancient authority and royal prerogatives took precedence over rational thought.  But beginning in the 14th century in Florence Italy a rebirth (Renaissance) of inquiry began in Florence Italy where the connection with the Roman past (availability of ancient documents and art), the wealth and political stability of that city permitted a resorgimento (resurgence of inquiry and thought) which challenged authority of religion and royal privilege, positing instead human ability to know reality through their senses, suing the power of observation and rise of reason over myth, blind faith and traditions. 

By the 18th century this new way of thinking had spread to wider Europe and the British Isles. People believed that the world was ordered, and human minds could discover that order by means of careful observation of the natural world and analysis of these observations. 

Historians have classed this post Renaissance period beginning in the 18th century as the Age of Enlightenment.  New discoveries in science math and astronomy clearly demonstrated the powers of human ability to understand and even perhaps control the world around them.  Inventions such as the steam engine, the cotton gin, threshing machine (for grains), the mercury thermometer, and in medicine, the smallpox vaccine were some of the many technological advances. In the political world the great world power of Spain was in decline, while  France and England were in ascent. Wars of succession were fought in Spain and Austria and near the end of that century the American and French Revolutions changed world concepts of how nations should be governed.   

The First Enlightenment

In the 18th century one might say that humans returned to the philosphy of reason of the ancients. The first “enlightenment” occurred more than 2,400 years before the 18th century with Thales of Miletus (626-545 BC) who was the first to abandon myth and imagination to explain the world around and the first to base theories and speculation on actual observation and inductive reasoning.  

Scotland in the 18^th century was at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution and the Scottish Enlightenment.  One of the underlying elements of thought was the 1707 Act of Union of Scotland and England which led to the formation of the United Kingdom.  

After 1707, the well-established Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh was disbanded. The former national political representatives of Scotland, the MPs, parliamentarians, support staff, secretaries and political activists were all forced to leave Edinburgh for London. 

The moving parliamentarians left behind a city fully developed as the capital of an independent nation in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the City had well-developed infrastructure and architecture designed to support institutions of politics, justice, law, education, medicine, science, as well as the headquarters and leadership of the Church of Scotland.  All of these intellectual support elements were left behind in the former capital.

At that time, though Scotland had only 20% of the population of England, it had more than twice the number of universities. There were five great centers of higher learning in Scotland in 1707 at: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Marischal, at King’s College in Aberdeen, and at St. Andrews.  

The great city of Edinburgh lost its political power, there was no parliament and no King, but it remained with a wealth of native talent, intellectual infrastructure  and expertise. These “left behind” elements of society appear to have been stimulated to excel, and to “thumb their noses” at the overarching political and military power which had departed for London.   

Furthermore, besides having remnant institutions and well-developed infrastructure, the 1707 union with England also opened Scotland to the UK’s extensive and expanding colonial markets.  The hugely profitable tobacco trade was well developed in Glasgow, where merchants imported American tobacco, and then exported re-packaged tobacco products to France and Europe at great profit.  

CITY OF EDINBURGH (Pronounced:“Edin bro”)

For these reasons, those who lived in Edinburgh during the 18^th century were well served by a thriving economy, well funded banks, five great universities, well stocked libraries, multiple reading clubs, several scientific societies, museums, and publishing houses that produced specialized periodical magazines in science, agriculture, manufacturing and medicine.

The city was also enhanced by an elite group of philosophers, jurists, churchmen, scientists and professors who formed an intellectually elite middle class. Among the many Scotsmen of note were: Robert Burns (poet), Adam Smith (economist), David Hume (philosopher),Robert Adam (architect), Joseph Black (chemist), John Hope (botanist), William Cullen (physician), James Hutton (geologist), John Playfair (author,geologist).  In 1830 Charles Lyell published Principles of Geology based on the work of Hutton and writings of Playfair. 

RATIONALISM, EMPIRICISM, FREE THINKING 

They also had among their midst a native of Edinburgh, the illustrious David Hume (1711-1776) who proposed a form of philosophical thought that emphasized observation and analysis. Hume was a proponent of empiricism, or the concept that all knowledge was based on observational evidence (the basis of inductive reasoning). Hume supported controlled experiments, and rejected a priori (i.e. from the past)  reasoning, unsupported imaginings, revelations, and argument from ancient authority. Hume was one of the most influential philosophers of his time, who attempted to apply experimental methods to moral subjects.

18TH CENTURY SCOTCH DISCOVERIES

Josh Ward and Sulfuric Acid  

In 1736 Joshua Ward of Glasgow, a Scotch pharmacist/chemist/entrepreneur, developed a process for the commercial production of sulfuric acid, is a strong acid widely used in industrial chemistry and in the production of hydrochloric and nitric acid . (KNO3 heat—>KNO2 + O2,    S+O2–>SO2,SO3, SO3 + H2O= H2SO4).  Sulfuric acid, called the “workhorse” acid was widely used to bleach cloth, to produce sodium bicarbonate needed in production of glass, soap, and dyes. 

Ward set up an array of glass containers in which he heated the potassium nitrate, sulfur and water, to produce SO3 gas, which then reacted with the water in the glass to produce sulfuric acid . The process in glass containers permitted the reaction to proceed more rapidly than earlier production processes. 

Though Ward published his process method it took him thirteen years to actually build the first large-scale successful commercial sulfuric acid production plant in Scotland in 1749.  It was a milestone in the chemical industry.  A few years earlier in 1746, an English chemist/physician  John Roebuck improved the process he had heard about by using larger (cheaper) vats made of sheets of lead to heat the sulfur potassium nitrate and water mixture to produce the acid. 

John Black, Carbon Dioxide, Magneium, Beam-Balance andf Latent Heat

Professor John Black taught chemistry at Edinburgh University, while there, he discovered the element magnesium, and also isolated a gas that was heavier than air and snuffed out a burning candle— that gas, later identified as carbon dioxide. Black, while still a student, also invented the laboratory beam balance still used today in chemical analysis.

Black, observing the temperature of water as it boiled noted that the water remains at a constant temperature as the heat converts the water into a gas. Water absorbs heat to change into a gas and it releases that heat when it condenses back into a liquid. Black called the heat released when the water condensed as the “latent heat” of gases. 

JAMES HUTTON OF EDINBURGH

James Hutton was born in 1726 into an affluent 18^th century Scottish family that resided in Edinburgh.  Hutton’s father, a well-to-do merchant probably engaged in the cross Atlantic trade with the American colonies, later became Edinburgh City Treasurer and later acquired through inheritance and investment two large farm properties in the countryside close to the English border.   Hutton’s father died in 1729 when James was only three years of age. 

In preparation to enter university, Hutton attended Edinburgh’s  local grammar school, and at the age of 14 was admitted to study classics at the University of Edinburgh. Though a classics student, at Edinburgh, outstanding professors permitted auditors to sit in on their lectures. It is likely that it was during this period that Hutton’s keen interest in chemistry and mathematics was developed. Perhaps, this new obsession with science was responsible for his abandonment of formal classics studies which ended abruptly and unhappily. As still a teenager his family decided on an apprenticeship with a local attorney.

 

Attorney Apprentice 

After leaving Edinburgh University, at the tender age of 17 he found himself as an apprentice attorney. He later admitted he found that work dull and uninteresting. Though it is claimed that during this period he and his co apprentice and boyhood friend James Davie entertained office staff with chemical experiments.  Such behaviors were not the route to success for young men aspiring for a career in the law and again after barely a year Hutton left or was asked to leave the law offices. 

Physician

In the 18th century there were few formal opportunities for those interested in natural science. Chemistry and mathematics were a part of medical training, so like other’s that followed Hutton in this area (this author and Charles Darwin too) perhaps to pursue his interest in chemistry, Hutton moved on to medicine which, in those days  of blurred scientific relations, chemistry played an important role.  A year later in 1744, he had become a physician’s assistant and had enrolled at the Medical School of the University of Edinburgh (1744-1747).  Perhaps this career path was the only one he could follow  to satisfy his passion for chemistry—and continue to garner support for his education from his family.  After four years at Edinburgh, Hutton transferred  to the University of Paris, and by 1749 had completed his dissertation for the doctorate degree under Professor Joachim Schwartz of Leiden University, in the Netherlands . 

At Leiden University on September 3, 1749 he successfully defended his dissertation on “Blood and the Microcirculation” and received his doctorate  in medicine on Sept 12, 1749. Hutton left the Netherlands and returned to London England, where, as a newly minted “doctor of medicine” he loitered around in that entertaining city for nine months apparently not interested in beginning a medical practice.  By the summer of 1750 his perigination s in London were over and we find that he has returned to Edinburgh. 

Chemist and Entrepreneur

There, he began to pursue chemical experiments with his boyhood friend James Davie.  Perhaps these two young avocational chemists were aware of the great success of their  countryman Joshua Ward, who in 1749 for the first time developed a very successful industrial process for the commercial production of sulfuric acid.  

Stimulated by Ward’s success the two friends worked on the production of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride) —another  widely used industrial chemical essential as a metal cleaning agent and an essential agent in the important process used to dye fabrics and cleaning metals.

Sal Ammoniac is a salt which formed white or gray crystalline encrustations around volcanic fumaroles or vents in volcanically active zones.  The whitish ammonium salt or Ammonium Chloride (NH4CL) was first used and collected in Roman times around volcanic vents in Libya and Crete. A well-known collection site was at the Siwa Oasis  in the Libyan desert where a series of volcanic fumaroles produced encrustations of a salt. They were located near the Temple of Zeus Ammon (Amun) at the Oasis.  As a result of its collection locale, the salt was called Sal Ammoniac (or “Salt of Ammon”). The compound NH4 or “ammonia” thus was named after Zeus of Ammon in Lybia.  

In the 18^th century Europe, Sal Ammoniac was collected from fumaroles around Mt Vesuvius in Italy. As a result of its means of collection, by hand, with strenuous walks necessary to climb up close to the volcano’s crater this essential chemical was often scarce and expensive. Hutton and Davie planned to make it more available to a growing industrializing nation, and generate a profit for themselves. 

In the 18^th century this ammonium salt  was used extensively to dissolve oxide coatings on metals before the “tinning process”, and for soldering metals. Tinning of copper cooking pots was an important and common use of this chemical. It was also used extensively in leather tanning and in dyeing fabrics. Sal Amoniac is a component human medicines. It functions as an expectorant in human cough remedies and served widely as “smelling salts”, and was also used in many veterinary preparations as well. 

Aware that Egyptians reported collecting this salt from the ceilings of caves in which camels had been kept and where camel dung had been stored, Hutton and David attempted to develop an industrial means of replicating this process.  By the end of 1751 Hutton and Davie had discovered a means to sublimate  sal ammoniac crystals by burning organic substances such as dung, and soot and condensing (more accurately sublimating) the salt crystals from the fumes by directing them into a cooling funnel and then scraping the crystals from the interior. 

The two formed a partnership and jointly invested in a manufacturing plant to produce the substance commercially This Hutton-Davie enterprise was highly successful and continued on for many years enhancing  Hutton’s income and permitting him to pursue other interests.

Ammonium chloride occurs in nature, often found in volcanic terranes as a sublimate or encrustations around volcanic vents or fumaroles. Sal ammoniac or ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) was (and remains) a widely used chemical. It is a salt of ammonia (NH3), a weak base, and hydrochloric acid (HCL) a strong acid which forms NH4CL a crystalline white powder that is easily soluble in water, forming a slightly acid solution.  

Agriculture

Being a successful chemist and entrepreneur did not end Hutton’s obsession with scientific discovery. Hutton had inherited two working farms from his father,  one in the lowlands of the southwest part of Scotland close to the English border called Slighshouses and another in more hilly country further north. By 1751 the peripatetic Hutton had turned his active mind to improving farming practices. With this transition to farming in mind— Hutton characteristically determined  to learn as much as he could about farming as he had about all of his other passions. 

Farmer/Agriculturist,

For this reason, he left Scotland to spend a year (1752-1753) studying agricultural practices in East Anglia in England..an area renowned  for its advanced agriculture practices at the time. 

East Anglia is a land of low relief, with mild climate and fertile loam soils.  The soils of this region are underlain by sedimentary shales, limestones and sandstones.  The underlying bedrock is the source material for the overlying soils.  Bedrock undergoes a natural process of rock weathering —a physico-chemical process in which silicate minerals  such as feldspars are chemically altered by water, soil acids, and oxygen into clays, while iron rich pyroxene and olivine  minerals weather (are chemically altered) to form red iron oxides, clay and silica. Hutton as a student of soils soon became aware of this transformation of rock into soil..and the long period of time it takes for the process to go to completion. 

The end-process often produces remnant, resistant minerals such as large chunks of minerals resistant to chemical alteration, such as quartz and flint nodules and organic remains such as fossilized or mineralized marine shells.  

Geology and Geologic Time

In his agricultural studies Hutton had the opportunity to journey to other parts of England as well. The soils of England vary widely and Hutton must have become aware of the fact that the rich lime-soils of southern and eastern England (such as Essex and East Anglia) were often characterized as having large amounts of prominent chert and flint pebbles and cobbles. These were so common, that farmers went to great effort to remove them so as to ease the wear of these hard minerals on the metal plow, and to prepare a proper seed bed for crops.  

These “pick-out” nodules the size of baseballs or melons (cobble sized) were so common that they were often used as a cheap building material for country  farmhouses and other structures. Chert and flint nodules were often used as a low cost fill in brick trimmed wall-structures. Brick was expensive, while chert nodules could be simply collected from “pick out” piles along farm fields.  

Hutton, who studied the rock outcrops in these areas was fully aware that these same flint and chert nodules were also found embedded in solid rock as siliceous concretions within the limestone outcrops of bedrocks of all these regions.  He must have quickly become aware of the fact that  limestone was easily broken down or weathered by the action of with mild acids found in soils,  while the insoluble chert nodules were left as a residue of the original solid rock that he observed below the soil or in near-by outcrops.  His observations led to an understanding of the long periods of  time necessary to affect these changes in bedrock to soil.

First Observations On Soil and Time

As a result of these observations he came to the conclusion that the soils of this area were likely the end product of the chemical alteration of the local limestone rock. As the limestone rocks bearing nodules decomposed they left behind the insoluble chert and flint pebbles and cobbles. 

These common  nodules were the proof of the essential, elemental process that soils are the end product of the chemical  alteration of subsurface rocks. But his observations as a farmer who examined his fields each year, included the insight that this process was a very slow one, likely taking thousands of years for limestone rock to weather into soil leaving behind chert and flint nodules. 

Hutton spent fourteen years farming during which time he continued to improve agriculture methods, and also followed his passion for discovery—in particular those involving earth processes. These years were critical ones in developing his insights into the slow processes of earth chemistry and breakdown of solid compact rocks into fragments and fine grained soils. And as well, farmers were all aware of the dilatory process of soil erosion whereby farm soils on slopes are subject to erosion by wind and water. These weathered products are carried down slope to form deposits of sediment in ponds and low lying areas. The slow processes of weathering, erosion and sedimentation only reenforced his concept of the antiquity of the Earth, 

Member of Royal Society

In 1767 Hutton returned to Edinburgh to a city with an active and robust intellectual life. He became an active member of a remarkable group of men who founded the Royal Society of Edinburgh and made that city an almost unrivaled center of intellectualism and experiment. 

In 1788 Hutton and James Hall took a boat trip along the southeast coast of Scotland. They stopped at Siccar Point a promontory that faced the North Sea. There Hutton and Hall observed a jumble of rocks that most observers would have concluded were the result of some past cataclysmic event which happened in a brief violent past, leaving the rocks crumbled and distorted.

But Hutton saw something very different. The base of the rock outcrop was formed from an up-tilted  fossil bearing marine, gray sandstones and mudstones (deposited under the sea). But these formerly horizontal beds —similar to those seen deposited in Hutton’s farm pond—had been altered by compaction were distorted by compression and tilted vertically. Above these steeply tilted gray beds a thin narrow zone of non deposition and erosion separated the gray rocks below from the gently tilted reddish ones above. This zone must have been exposed to the atmosphere and to soil erosion as Hutton observed on his sloping fields.  Thus the region which was a marine basin had been drastically altered.

Hutton later wrote that the historic record in the rocks at Siccar Point indicated: 1)The  lower fine gray sedimentary beds were deposited in an ocean. 2) These sediments were buried, lithified and folded up into an upright (vertical position) and subsequently raised above sea level.  3) As a result of their elevated position, they were slowly eroded away (by the same processes that eroded Hutton’s farm soils).  4) The marine beds must have remained for a long period of time exposed to the air, to rain, and to erosion. That period of erosion was represented by a gap in depositon and a surface (called an unconformity*) with evidences of weathering and erosion of the underlying upturned marine beds. That period of erosion was represented by a gap in deposition called an unconformity* ( 5) As time passed  these gray marine beds were again buried. This time  by coarse grained red, terrestrial sediment derived  from a near-by highlands or mountain range (Hutton recognized that the small rounded pebbles in the sediments must have traveled a long way from their high elevations source probably in streams ) The red sandy sediment washed down over the gray vertical beds, and covered them up. It was in time also leithified.  6) Later earth movements tilted the whole region ]upward to their present aspect. 

Siccar Point was an outcrop which told of multiple geologic events, and of long slow processes which must have taken enormous periods of time to complete. 

After some 25 years of wide ranging study, field work, consultation, and writing, and after visiting Siccar Point in 1788, Hutton prepared a paper on his “Theory of the Earth” to be read to the Royal Society in two sessions. His theory  was soon after formally published in his book: Theory of the Earth (1788) in which Hutton laid out his theory that the Earth’s mantle of rocks was not the result of some cataclysmic event that occurred in short periods of time, but were the result of the slow processes such as soil weathering, downslope movement of soil and rock, erosion by wind and water, and sedimentation.

At Siccar Point old folded rocks were eroded away, and then covered over with horizontally deposited rocks that bore marine fossils and must have been deposited under water in an ocean basin.  At present these processes occur only very slowly. Siccar Point proved that the geologic processes that operate only slowly can have great impact if one gives them a long period ot time to operate. Hutton’s theory posited the uniform action of natural processes over long periods of Earth time can effectuate the Earth’s present appearance.     

James Hutton of Edinburgh, Scotland (1726-1797) was a tepid student of the classics, a failed attorney’s assistant, a non-practicing physician, a part-time gentleman-farmer, an avocational chemist, an inveterate entrepreneur,  a working soil scientist, field naturalist and passionate geologist whose seminal life work “Theory of the Earth” (1788) would establish the immense age of the Earth, and the concept that slow gradual change, which operate in the present time, by acting over long periods of “Earth” time was responsible for the Earth’s present aspect. Thus this seminal work established, both the unimaginable age of the Earth, as well as the fact that everyday slow processes are responsible for its topography and structure. It also elevated geology from an avocational hobby to that of a key element of natural science.  

John Playfair (1748-1819) Scottish minister, mathematician and professor of natural philosophy at University of Edinburgh, was the author of: Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802). Playfair was a colleague of Hutton, who wrote “Illustrations” to clarify, expand and make more accessible to the public the idea of “uniformity” that Hutton espoused; 

Charles Lyell, (1797-1875) Scottish geologist, attorney, avocational geologist and author of immensely popular Principles Geology (1830). In which. in three volumes (last one in 1833) establishes in clear readable language that: 1) The Earth is very old.  2) It was shaped and altered by the natural processes that operate today.  3) These processes operate at the same uniform intensity as today.  He establishes the three watchwords of geology: Time, Change, Uniformity. 

Lyell’s book Principles of Geology which emphasizes the

Geological science was born…in Scotland..a truly Scotch affair.       

*in this case the unconformity is termed an “angular unconformity”   I.e. the base beds are folded upward.