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Hereditary Genius
221
may have been 35 years her junior. Also, that this sister may have been as
much as 40 years old when her daughter was born, and that that daughter may
also have been 40 years old when she gave birth to Dr. C. Hutton. As 40 + 40
+ 35 — 20 = 95, this hypothesis would satisfy the dates. However, I strongly
suspect that Miss Hutton, writing from her father's not very clear dictation, in
his old age (he d. aet. 83), had omitted a phrase which I will supplement in
brackets, and had thereby unintentionally struck out one or even two
intervening generations. Thus, “The mother of Dr. James Hutton and the
mother of Dr. Charles Hutton were sisters; [they were children (or ?
grandchildren) of Mr. — Hutton;] and his grandmother and the mother of Sir
Isaac Newton were also sisters.” This reading would satisfy the possessive
pronoun “his,” it would satisfy the dates, and it would also account for the
exact nature of the relationship not having been a matter of distinct family
tradition. If, on the other presumption, the mothers of the Huttons had been
first cousins to Sir Isaac, the Huttons would assuredly have often alluded to
the fact; it is a simple form of kinship, easy to remember, and would have
become well known to their contemporaries, especially to those who were
Fellows of the Royal Society, of which Dr. Charles Hutton was the secretary;
and it would never have been overlooked by the biographers, either of Sir Isaac
or of the Huttons. In the biographies of the Huttons, Newton is simply
spoken of as having been their ancestor by the maternal line.
uPp. Charles Hutton, LL.D., was the well-known mathematician, Secretary to the
Royal Society, and Professor at Woolwich.
uPp. James Hutton was the geologist and chemist, and founder of modern geology;
a man whose reputation was very great in his day, and whose writings some of
our modern leading geologists consider as extraordinarily good and far from
obsolete.
[n.] John Conduit; succeeded Sir Isaac as Master of the Mint.
Oersted, Hans Christian; Danish physicist and chemist, discoverer of electro-
magnetism; d. aet. 74.
B. Anders Sandoe Oersted, Premier of Denmark and author; d. aet. 82.
N. Anders Sandoe (also); S. American traveller and naturalist.
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