Geology 
If any country gave the science of Geology to the world, it was Scotland! “Scotland has done so much for Geology” says a writer, “that this science seems peculiarly her own.”
James Hutton’s great work, “Theory of the Earth”, marked the beginning of the Science of Geology, and no geologist would dispute that.
Then came Sir Charles Lyell’s “The Principles of Geology”, which popularised Hutton’s discoveries. James Hutton was born at Edinburgh: Lyell at Kinnordy in Forfarshire. Darwin applied to biology Hutton’s “evolutionary” geological conclusions: and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was independently arrived at by a Scotsman, Alfred Russell Wallace.
Underrated as Glasgow is, Scotland is even more underrated. How many appreciate that the best deep-water harbourages in Britain are in Scotland? The highest mountain in Britain, Ben Nevis, is in Scotland. The second largest loch in Britain is Loch Lomond. The longest canal in Britain is the Caledonian Canal. The highest waterfall in Britain is in Scotland. There are over 700 islands in Scotland. England’s scenic beauties are not a patch on Scotland’s.
James Young began life as a cabinet-maker in Glasgow where he was born: he studied chemistry and became a Chemistry Professor. He invented a successful way of manufacturing paraffin from West Lothian shale, and when the oil was discovered in America it was Young’s patents which were used to process it. “Paraffin Young”, as he was sometimes called, without a shadow of a doubt founded the world’s first oil industry, the shale oil industry in West Lothian, Scotland.
“The Prairie Cattle Company Limited, was the first large-scale joint-stock venture in cattle ranching in Texas… Though Edinburgh based, much of the capital for the Prairie was from Dundee.” – W.G. Kerr, “Studies in Scottish Business History”. One of the active participants in the Scottish-American ranching enterprises was a Robert Fleming, “frequently referred to” says W.G. Kerr, “as the father of the investment trust movement.”
Three quarters of the countries of Europe would figuratively dance with joy if they possessed Scotland’s reserves of coal. Coal provides more than energy: its bye-products are almost an industry by themselves.
The Atlantic rollers off Scotland’s Hebridean shores are ideal for the production of wave-power energy. Scotland also has considerable peat deposits.
The following is a quotation from p.167 of “Power From the Sea” by Clive Callow, at one time employed by the Petroleum Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma:- “The finding of oil off Scotland has, in a sense been a bit of a home-coming for the oil industry. Certainly there are very old established links between Scotland and Texas going back over 100 years to when Texas was formed. Then Texas was a new, beckoning place wit plenty of land but little in the way of financial resources. Scotland was rich; and it is probably true to say that if it had not been for Scottish money there would have been no State of Texas. It was Scottish Investment Trusts, originally formed as land-mortgage companies which provided the capital to open up Texas. Now, what happened to Texas could happen to Scotland.”
In “Scotland and Oil”, A. MacGregor Hutcheson and Alexander Hogg wrote: “It is now clear that the scale at which oil and gas have been discovered in Scottish waters is much greater than any oil company would have dared to hope only a few years ago. Moreover the same is true of the Norwegian sector, from which much gas and possibly also a considerable amount of oil will soon be piped to Scottish shores.
New discoveries continue to be made almost monthly, while the evaluation of known fields adds to the total reserves. It is now apparent that the UK is likely to become a major oil producing area by world standards, and that Scotland is going to be the source of most of this wealth.”
Thomas Henderson, born at Dundee, a poor lawyer’s clerk, studied astronomy. He became Government astronomer at the Cape and later Scotland’s fort astronomer royal. His observations gave the first authentic evidence of stellar parallax, and he was the first to measure the distance of a fixed star.
Alexander Buchan, a Scot, mapped the isobars and isotherms of the world! He has been called the father of weather forecasting so essential to aviation.
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