This landmark edition recovers Hutton's lost agricultural vision in which the practice of farming is informed by the latest scientific insights with the potential to transform Scotland's rural landscape, society and economy.


James Hutton, author of Theory of the Earth and a leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, is usually remembered as the 'Founder of Modern Geology.' Yet his unpublished Elements of Agriculture reveals a wider intellectual project, rooted in farming, natural philosophy and the improvement of land and society.

Transcribed and edited by Alan Werritty, this major late work reveals Hutton agricultural thinking in terms of soil, climate, plant propagation, crop succession and rural economy, and asking how practical husbandry might be placed on firmer theoretical foundations. Drawing on his travels in East Anglia and the Flanders, followed by a decade transforming the family farm, Hutton connects field observation with broader questions about nature and practical knowledge. In so doing he provides a valuable contribution to the debates on agricultural improvement in eighteenth-century Scotland.

His most original contribution was the concept of degree days - the number of days above a threshold temperature needed to bring a crop to fruition - a concept still used in agronomy. Read alongside writers such as Arthur Young, John Sinclair and Lord Kames, Hutton's Elements of Agriculture opens a fresh route into Enlightenment science, environmental history, agricultural history and the culture of 'improvement' in eighteenth-century Scotland.