50 tup: journal of eotany 



Naturalist (pp. 775-780) an article entitled " A Little-known 

 Jamaican Naturalist: Dr. Anthony llobinson," in which he reproduced 

 a number of Robinson's observations on the reptiles of Jamaica ; other 

 notes and descriptions are published by P. H. Gosse in his Naturalist'' s 

 Sojourn in Jamaica (1851). In 1920 the portfolios of botanical 

 drawings were lent to Mr. William Fawcett and Dr. llendle for use 

 in connection with their Flora of Jamaica, and they have identified 

 most of the species depicted. 



In the West India Eeference Library of the Institute is a manu- 

 script book of about the years 1825-30, entitled ' The Omnibus or 

 Jamaica Scrap Book : A Thing of Shreds and Patches. By Jack 

 Jingle.' In this appears the following account of Eobinson : — 



" Anthony Robinson, Esq., was a native of Sunderland, in the 

 county of Durham, where he served a regular apprenticeship to his 

 father, a man exceedingly respectable in his profession of surgeon and 

 apothecary. From his earliest youth he became attached to botanical 

 studies, and whilst he continued under paternal tuition he devoted all 

 his leisure hours to Gerard, Parkinson, and other ancient herbalists, 

 or to excursions abroad and a collation of their pages with the great 

 volume of Nature. It was not till after his arrival at Jamaica, that 

 he met with the ' Systema Naturae ' and other works of Linnajus, 

 which opened to his mind a new and beautiful theory in his favourite 

 science and engaged it so forcibly, that for several years he scarcely 

 gave attention to any other pursuit. The chief objects of his enquiry 

 in this island were non descript plants of which he discovered many, 

 unnoticed either by Sloane or Browne, and he corrected their descrip- 

 tions of many other plants which had been already discovered. A 

 desire of strengthening and enlivening his ideas of the true generic 

 or specific alliance of the vegetable races naturally first pointed out to 

 him the necessity of an liortus siccus ; but this having its imper- 

 fection, next suggested the necessity of cop3'ing Nature more expres- 

 sively by the pencil, in the management of which although he had 

 never been grounded, yet his natural turn this way very soon enabled 

 him to attain a degree of excellence. The western world presented 

 him Avith an inexhaustible variety of subjects ; and the frequency of 

 his delineations so improved his hand, that, among those specimens he 

 left behind him, were not a few which have been pronounced, by 

 good judges, equal to the works of professed draughtsmen. His 

 judgment was clear and sound, and his memory so retentive, that he 

 could once recount the genera, names, and characters, of above 1000 

 Evn-opean plants. He had a great general knowledge in some other 

 sciences, and was particularly well read in modern history. He was 

 distinguished beyond most men for a feeling heart, a warm and 

 steady attachment in his friendships — a behaviour perfectly inoffen- 

 sive, an integrity that nothing could corrupt — a rigid adherence to 

 truth, and for a pliancy and vivacity of temper which rendered him 

 acceptable to all companies. His only blemish, in short, was a certain 

 thoughtless improvidence, to whose ascendancy it is to be imputed, 

 that the public has never profited by his botanical remarks, which 

 were always hastily scribbled in a hand almost illegible, upon the 



