A nation shaped by rain: exhibition celebrates Scotland’s wettest obsession

It seems fitting that, 250 years ago, one of Scotland’s foremost scientists took a close interest in what is arguably the country’s most famous feature: rain James Hutton, celebrated by Scots as the father of modern geology, went so far as to write a formula for “a theory of rain”. In 1784, he sketched out the key principles for the “condensation of aqueous vapour contained in the air” . Now, Hutton’s calculations are to take centre stage in an exhibition celebrating rain at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. Between 100bn and 160bn cubic metres of rain fall on Scotland each year. The library has drawn on two of the country’s great literary heroes – Minnie the Minx and Robert Burns – pairing them with tartan samples of the rainproof Mackintosh fabric invented by the Glasgow-born chemist Charles Macintosh in 1823. Minnie the Minx features in the exhitibion. Photograph: Martin Baxendale Alongside copies of the Beano – including a cartoon strip featuring Minnie and the Met Office educating children about the dangers of storms – the National Library of Scotland is showing a rare original copy of Daemonologie, the treatise on witches and the supernatural by King James VI of Scotland and I of England and Wales. Children’s books featuring rain in the exhibition. …