NOTES.
193
and seeing an apple tree pickt one before it was ripe, and immediately I saw
Mr. Ray on the other side of the hedge in the field and no stile to get over to
him so we walkt and talkt but got no more to him, and so it fell out, upon her
death, a distrust came by Mrs. Ray's charging me that I did not sufficiently
press the means I had sent her, tho' it was her fault, for I had sent her a prepara-
tion of steel which would have cured her and prevented her death. So intimacy
discontinued, tho' we never fell out but invited me to his hous, but without
difference we were at distance" (Allen's MS., p. 203).
Benjamin Allen was born in 1664. He was the son of Benjamin Allen, a
doctor in London. "Dr. Gale in St. Paul's was his maister." He married
Katherine, daughter of Dr. Thomas Draper, whom he writes of as a London
physician; and he must have married young, for in 1680 ("a dreadful year for
lightening, a comet and feavers") we find a letter written to "his father Draper.''
They had a numerous family ; the Braintree registers record the baptisms of
Thomas (August 12th, 1697), Benjamin (March 20th, 1698-9), Katherine (July
nth, 1701), Mary (December 4th, 1702), and Elizabeth (December 26th, 1704).
The burials of Benjamin (1724), Lydia (1746), Margaret (1747), Mary (1747),
Thomas (1755), Johanna (1756), Susannah (1757), Walter (1758), and Elizabeth
(1759) are entered. This shows at least ten children; probably Katherine
married.
Allen was in practice in 1686 ; under that date we read in the MS. volume,
"she was the first patient I had, and I cured her.'' I am not able to give the
exact date of Allen's death, and Mr. Kenworthy writes me, "I cannot find B.
Allen's burial in Braintree register, though I have looked carefully through, The
burial of his son at the church would show the family were not strictly 'Congre-
gationalists,' though I think Dr. Allen was that way, judging from his remarks
about religion."
Allen writes, 1724,—"This year I lost my dear son Benjamin," which is
corroborated by Braintree register,—"1724, Aug. 2nd. Mr. Benj. Allen buried
Step. Newcomen Vicr." showing this entry to refer to the son.
The last entry in Allen's Chronicle is "1736, Feb. 16th, a high tide, Mr.
Copper drowned, not such a tide since 130 years" (cf. "Birds of Essex," p. 62,
note ; Salmon says 1735)- In the Essex Poll-book for May 7th, 1734, which I
have, Samuel Dale and Benjamin Allen, the two Braintree physicians, naturalists,
and I trust friends, are recorded as both voting the same way. In the MS. book
we find, "Mr. Forster, of Thackstead, who died of a fever, 1748." If this date
be correct, and be written by Allen, it brings his life down very late. If he died
in 1736, as seems probable, he would be about seventy-two years of age ; if in
1748 about eighty-four.
I am not aware that Allen published any other work than "The Natural
History of the Chalybeat and Purging Waters of England" (1699), and "The
Natural History of the Mineral Waters of Great Britain. To which are added
some observations of the Cicindela or Glow-worm" (1711).
Edward A. Fitch.
Abnormal Mushroom.—In September last I gathered in a meadow a speci-
men of the common mushroom (Agaricus campestris), which, in addition to the
ordinary collection of gills beneath, possessed another inverted set growing on the
outside of the pileus, the diameter of the abnormal one being about one-fourth
that of the other. There was no trace of a double stalk.—Reginald W.
Christy, Roxwell, December, 1890.
O