1785 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Ilay Campbell
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Dundas of Arniston

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

  Events

• 7 March – geologist James Hutton proposes the theory of uniformitarianism to the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
• Late September – James Boswell’s The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides is published.
• 5 October – flight by Florentine aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi in a gas balloon from George Heriot's School, Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth to Ceres, Fife.
• 23 November – Lunardi flies from St Andrew's Square, Glasgow, to Hawick.

  Births

• 18 May – John Wilson, writer
• 18 November – David Wilkie, painter

  Deaths

• 23 January – Matthew Stewart, mathematician
• 4 October – Alexander Runciman, painter
• 23 October – William Cochran, painter

  The arts

• 22 May – Robert Burns' first child, Elizabeth, is born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton and his poems "To a Mouse" and "Halloween" are written.