Letter: Hutton's vision

ON SATURDAY I went into Holyrood Park, Edinburgh, to see the famous "Hutton's Section" recently shown on television.

A beautiful day and a crowd in the park, mums and dads, kids on skateboards, young students, tourists, but a bit depressing to realise none of the walkers on the Radical Road saw what James Hutton had seen. Mainly because, although perfectly obvious, there was no commemorative plaque, nothing to draw attention to the crucial "eureka" spot of geographical importance.

James Hutton firmly belongs among that small band of geniuses who first explained our world and how we came to be. Charles Darwin's 19th century theory on the evolution of life followed William Herschel's evolution of "deep space" just as Herschel followed Hutton's 18th century evolution of "deep time".

Perhaps it's just coincidence that so many intellectual giants of evolutionary thought either lived, studied or visited Edinburgh. Thinking about this made me wonder about Scots at large. If Hutton had slaughtered thousands of his fellow human beings, we'd have statues of him all over Scotland. And we'd insist his gory battlefield had a visitor centre on it. But Hutton as a man of peace clearly seems not to be worth fussing over.

As it is, the Queen's Park is crying out for a visitor centre, not just to explain the monstrously huge Edinburgh volcano, or even how the Ice Age shaped the city, but at the basest of all levels, to achieve the park's full financial potential.

ROBERT VEITCH

Paisley Drive

Edinburgh