Certain it is that he returned to Edinburgh, and in the summer of 1750 he abandoned his intention of practising, and resolved to apply himself to agriculture. He had as a friend Sir John Hall, of Dunglass, a man of ingenuity and taste for science, and also an agriculturist. As he was never destined to do anything by halves, Hutton determined to study farming in the school which was then reckoned the best, and the manner which is undoubtedly the most effectual. He went into Norfolk, and fixed his residence for some time in that county, living in the house of a farmer, who served both for his landlord and his instructor. This he did in 1752. He always spoke well of John Dybold, who made him comfortable, and whose practical lessons in husbandry he much valued. He appears, indeed, to have enjoyed this situation very much: the simple and plain character of the society with which he mingled, suited well with his own, and the peasants of Norfolk could find nothing in the stranger to set them at a distance from him, or to make them treat him with reserve. It was always true of Dr. Hutton that to an ordinary man he appeared to be an ordinary man; possessing a little more spirit and liveliness, perhaps, than it is usual to meet with. He enjoyed Norfolk life very much, and doubtless it was the very different soil of that county which made the young Scotchman think, for the first time, about the construction of the surface of the earth which he hoped to till and profit by. While his head quarters were thus established in Norfolk, he made journeys, on foot, into different parts of England; and though the main object of them was to obtain information in agriculture, yet he never passed a pit, or a cliff, or a river-side, without studying the structure of the soil, so that in 1753, Hutton was incontinently making himself a geologist, a pursuit which his knowledge of chemistry and mineralogy rendered easy to him. What agriculture he learned in Norfolk was of the greatest use to him, and he visited Flanders to learn more. He travelled from Rotterdam through Holland, Brabant, Flanders, and Picardy, and was highly delighted with the cultivation of the small holdings of those countries. Though his principal object in this excursion was to acquire information in the practice of husbandry, he appears to have paid much attention to the mineralogy of the countries through which he passed. Then he returned and took up his own farm in Berwickshire, bringing with him a Norfolk ploughman. He set to work and farmed, using every known improvement, and he has the credit of being one of those who introduced the new husbandry into a country where it has since made more rapid advances than in any other part of Great Britain. From 1754 to 1768 he resided on his farm, visiting Edinburgh occasionally. He seems to have led a tranquil country life, succeeding as a farmer; and yet there was, during all this time, a slow yet progressive growth of a science in his mind. Cautious,