Theory of the Earth Edwin Morgan James Hutton that true son of fire who said to Burns 'Aye, man, the rocks melt wi the sun' was sure the age of reason's time was done: what but imagination could have read granite boulders back to their molten roots? And how far back was back, and how far on would basalt still be basalt, iron iron? Would second seas re-drown the fossil brutes? 'We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.' They died almost together, poet and geologist, and lie in wait for hilltop buoys to ring, or aw the seas gang dry and Scotland's coast dissolve in crinkled sand and pungent mist.