Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Edward Maitland

Judiciary edit

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Colonsay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Glenalmond

• 15 September – King's and Marischal Colleges in Aberdeen merge as the University of Aberdeen.
• October – the Royal National Lifeboat Institution stations the first Thurso life-boat at Scrabster.
• 17 October – the first professional golf tournament is held at Prestwick, regarded as the first Open (although it is not truly open until the following year when amateurs can participate).^[1]
• 21 December – St Mary's Cathedral, Aberdeen (Roman Catholic) is dedicated.^[2]
• Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh, opens.
• Andrew Stewart sets up the Clyde Tube Works in Glasgow, a predecessor of Stewarts & Lloyds.^[3]
• Folklorist John Francis Campbell begins publication of Popular Tales of the West Highlands in Edinburgh.

• 6 March – Ronald Munro Ferguson, 1st Viscount Novar, politician, 6th Governor-General of Australia (died 1934)
• 7 March – John Duncan Watson, civil engineer (died 1946 in Birmingham)
• 22 March – John George Bartholomew, cartographer (died 1920)
• 15 April – Edward Arthur Walton, painter (died 1922)
• 2 May
  • John Scott Haldane, physiologist (died 1936)
  • D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, biologist (died 1948)
• 9 May – J. M. Barrie, author (died 1937 in London)
• 30 May – Archibald Thorburn, wildlife painter (died 1935 in Surrey, England)
• 3 July – William Wallace, composer (died 1940)
• 31 July – George Warrender, admiral (died 1917 in London)
• 3 August – William Kennedy Dickson, inventor, pioneer of cinematography, born in France (died 1935 in Twickenham, England)
• 19 August – John Kane, naïve painter (died 1934 in the United States)
• 25 September – John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, 1st Governor-General of Australia (died 1908 in France)
• 21 November – James Leith Macbeth Bain, religious minister, hymn writer and walker (died 1925)
• 26 November – James Whitelaw Hamilton, landscape painter (died 1932)
• James Colton, anarchist (died 1936)
• James Miller, architect (died 1947)

• 27 January – Major-General Sir Thomas Brisbane, former Governor of New South Wales and astronomer (born 1773)
• 25 March – James Braid, surgeon and scientist, often regarded as the first genuine hypnotherapist (born 1795)
• 1 April – William Mure, scholar and politician (born 1799)
• 25 August – William Wilson, poet and publisher (born 1801)
• James Barr, composer (born 1779)

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1860 in Ireland