Dr. Rat tray Authorship. 119 



Seeing that there was no help for it, Robertson 

 submitted to his instructor's authority, and gained 

 some useful information on the subject he was com- 

 petent to teach, though he had learned but little 

 from him on the special subject of mosses. This 

 Dr. Rattray was in some respects a remarkable man. 

 He had risen through .various grades of life by his 

 abilities, distinguishing himself in every undertaking 

 by his aptitude to master his subject. Unfortunately, 

 freemasonry engrossed so much of his time and 

 attention that he lost much of his medical practice. 



During the years immediately following his marriage 

 with Miss Alston, Robertson's attention was neces- 

 sarily much engrossed with business, nor had he yet 

 taken up any branch of natural history for more than 

 a passing amusement, but his scrap-book shows that 

 he was already turning his attention to literature. 

 Fugitive pieces of poetry he composed for home con- 

 sumption, which won a succes d'estime among those 

 for whose pleasure they were written. His thoughts 

 and reflections in prose on miscellaneous subjects he 

 entrusted to the Scotch Reformer Gazette and the 

 Glasgow Herald. 



Amongst other things, at the time of the potato 

 famine, he ventured to argue against the unreason- 

 able scare which made some persons imagine that 

 " symptoms of a total extinction of the vegetable 

 food of man " could be discerned in this calamity. 

 The origin of it had been discreetly traced by one 

 of the Glasgow preachers to the desecration of the 

 sabbath. Some of his contributions endeavoured to 

 ^enforce upon the minds of his fellow-townsmen in 



