In September of the same year he wrote from Montpellier, where he visited Pierre Magnol; and, after staying at Bologna, where he met Marcello Malpighi, and in Rome and Naples, he travelled on, in 1684, to Geneva and Leyden.
From Montpellier he had written to Martin Lister a letter on the Pont-Saint-Esprit on the Rhône River, printed as one of his first contributions to the Philosophical Transactions in June 1684, and in the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Though his letters and papers deal with natural history generally, he paid particular attention to plants, and was styled by Leonard Plukenet in 1696 "vir de re herbariâ optime meritus", in his Almagestum.
Robinson was mainly instrumental in securing the publication of Ray's Wisdom of God in Creation, and suggested the Synopsis Animalium and the Sylloge Stirpium Europæarum.
[1] Robinson has been credited with Two Essays by L.P., M.A., from Oxford, concerning some errors about the Creation, General Flood, and Peopling of the World, and … the rise of Fables … London, 1695.
He admitted having assisted the author, and to having written the introduction to Sir John Narborough's Account of several late Voyages (London, 1694), and the epistle dedicatory to the English translation of Louis le Comte's Memoirs and Observations made in … China (London, 1697).