ROB 



HOB 



of these cases was determined to be a 

 robbery. 



By 7 George IT. c. 21, if any person 

 shall, with any offensive weapon, assault, 

 or by menaces, or in any forcible or vio- 

 lent manner, demand any money or 

 goods, with a felonious intent to rob 

 another, he shall be guilty of felony, and 

 be transported for seven years. 



If any person, being 1 out of prison, shall 

 commit any robbery, and afterwards dis- 

 cover two or more persons who shall 

 commit any robbery, so as two or more 

 be convicted, he shall have the King's 

 pardon for all robberies he shall have 

 committed before such discovery. 



High -way robbery differs from robbery 

 only in this, that there is a reward of 40/. 

 for the apprehending of the offender, and 

 the horse which the robber rides is for- 

 feited. 



ROBERGIA, in botany, so named in 

 honour of Laurentius Roberg, a genus of 

 the Decandria Pentagynia class and or- 

 der. Natural order of Terebintaceze, 

 Jussieu. Essential character : calyx five- 

 parted ; petals five ; drupe with a one- 

 seeded nut, and a two-valved shell. 

 There is but one species, viz. R. fru- 

 tescens, a native of the woods of Guiana. 

 ROBIN1A, in botany, a genus of the 

 Diadelphia Decandria class and order. 

 Natural order of Papilionaceae, or Legu- 

 minosze. Essential character : calyx four- 

 cleft ; legume gibbous, elongated. There 

 are seventeen species. 



ROB1XS (BEXJAMIN), in biography, 

 an English mathematician and philoso- 

 pher, of great genius and eminence, was 

 born at Bath, in Somersetshire, 1707. His 

 parents were of low condition, and 

 quakers ; and, consequently, neither able 

 from their circumstances, nor willing 

 from their religious profession, to have 

 him much instructed in that kind of learn- 

 ing which they are taught to despise as 

 human. Nevertheless he made an early 

 and surprising progress in various 

 branches of science and literature, par- 

 ticularly in the mathematics ; and his 

 friends being desirous that he might con- 

 tinue his pursuits, and that his merit 

 might not be buried in obscurity, wished 

 that he could be properly recommended 

 to teach that science in London. Accord- 

 ingly, a specimen of his abilities, in this 

 way, was sent up thither, and shown to 

 Dr. Pemberton, the author of the " View 

 of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy ;" who 

 thence conceiving a good opinion of the 

 writer, for a further trial of his skill, sent 

 him some problems, which Robins re- 



solved very much to his satisfaction. He 

 then came to London, where he confirm- 

 ed the opinion which had been pvecon- 

 ceived of his abilities and knowledge. 



But though Robins was possessed ot 

 much more skill than is usually required 

 in a common teacher ; yet being very 

 young, it was thought proper that he 

 should employ some time in perusing the 

 best writers upon the sublimer parts of 

 the mathematics, before he should under- 

 take publicly the instruction of others. 

 In this interval, besides improving him- 

 self in the modern languages, he had op- 

 portunities of reading, in particular, the 

 works of Archimedes, Apollonius, Fer- 

 mat, Huygens, De Witt, Slusius, Grego- 

 ry, Barrow, Newton, Taylor and Cotes. 

 These authors he readily understood, 

 without any assistance, of which he gave 

 frequent proofs to his friends : one was, a 

 demonstration of the last proposition of 

 " Newton's Treatise on Quadratures," 

 which was thought not undeserving a 

 place in the Philos. Trans, for 1727. 



Not long after an opportunity offered 

 him of exhibiting to the public a specimen 

 also of his knowledge in natural philoso- 

 phy. The Royal Academy of Sciences 

 at Paris had proposed, among their prize 

 questions in 1724 and 1726, to demon- 

 strate the laws of motion in bodies im- 

 pinging on one another. John Bernoulli 

 here condescended to be a candidate ; and 

 as his dissertation lost the reward, he ap- 

 pealed to the learned world by printing it 

 in 1727. In this piece he endeavoured to 

 establish Leibnitz's opinion of the force of 

 bodies in motion, from the effects of their 

 striking against springy materials : as Po- 

 leni had before attempted to evince the 

 same thing, from experiments of bodies 

 falling on soft and yielding substances. 

 But as the insufficiency of Poleni's argu- 

 ments had been demonstrated in the Phi- 

 los. Trans, for 1722; so Robins published in 

 the " Present State of the Republic of 

 Letters," for May 1728, a confutation of 

 Bernoulli's performance, which was al- 

 lowed to be unanswerable. 



Robins now began to take scholars. 

 About this time he quitted the dress and 

 profession of a quaker ; and, probably, 

 without reflecting very much upon the 

 subject of religion, he soon shook off the 

 prejudices of his early habits. But 

 though he professed to teach the ma- 

 thematics only, he would frequently as- 

 sist particular friends in other matters ; 

 for he was a man of universal knowledge; 

 and the confinement of this way of life not 



