A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF DR. ROBB. 5 



A study of the wild plants of the Province was accompanied by an 

 interest in the cultivated forms and in the conditions of their produc- 

 tion. In April, 1850, having refused to be elected to the Fredericton 

 City Council, he took hold of a Provincial Society for Encouragement 

 of Agriculture, which, he says, " gave him more to do than the Council." 

 He was elected its president, and soon after wrote a paper on the 

 subject of Manures, which, with others, was afterwards printed, 

 though no copies, so far as known to the writer, are now extant. 

 Practically, he became Secretary of Agriculture for the Province, an 

 office not actually established until a much later period, retaining the 

 position until his death, and in that capacity visiting many parts of 

 the Province, giving frequent lectures on agricultural subjects, and 

 correlating the statistical returns submitted to him by his many 

 correspondents. I have before me his lecture, " On Agricultural 

 Progress in New Brunswick," and find it to be a model of terse state- 

 ment, extended observation, careful criticism of existing methods, and 

 sound judgment in the direction of possible improvement. The 

 government of to-day could not do better than to have this lecture 

 reprinted and widely circulated among the class for whom it was 

 chiefly intended. 



Such a man as Dr. Robb would of course naturalty understand 

 the intimate relationship between the nature of soils and that of the 

 rocks from which they are derived. His interest in geology had, 

 moreover, already been aroused by his European tour, the fruits of 

 which were before him, and no doubt employed in the illustration of 

 his daily lectures. We may be sure, therefore, that it was with no 

 indifferent eye that he scanned the results of the geological survey 

 begun by Dr. Gesner in 1837, and continued during the four follow- 

 ing years. 



In the commencement of this sketch it was stated that Dr. Robb 

 represents the second period in the history of scientific progress in 

 New Brunswick. Strictly speaking, he and Dr. Gesner were contem- 

 poraries, but the first published observations of Dr. Robb, of a geolo- 

 gical nature, are subsequent to those of Dr. Gesner, and are largely in 

 the direction of criticism of the latter, — criticisms, however, based on 

 his own personal observations aud evidently having no other object 

 than that of reaching more reliable conclusions. These criticisms are 

 mostly contained in the report of Prof. J. W. F. Johnston on the 

 Agricultural Capabilities of New Brunswick. Dr. Robb here especially 

 objects to the enthusiastic and in many instances grossly exaggerated 



