DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE. 151
with one of them ; which, after some short time, coupled with it; but, because
the box where into they were put was small and shut, to confirm the experiment,
he put a creeping glow-worm into an open box and a flying one to her; which,
fluttering with his wings, did presently, in his [i.e., Allen's] sight, march to the
creeping one Sc couple with her. How this can accord with what Mr. Waller
delivers of the winged Cicindelae, -that they are both male and female and couple
together—I see not.
Nearly twenty years later, Allen published his own account
of this observation, appended (curiously enough) to one of his
works on Mineral Waters.1 He did so, he says, in pursuance of
a promise he had made to Ray before the latter's death. Ray
bad inferred, rightly enough, from Allen's observation, that the
winged glow-worms were the males and the wingless the
females.2
In confirmation of this [says Allen], I have observ'd them several times, in
several years, coupling ; both coming to some females I had in an open box and
to some I kept in a grass-plat before my garden, and also in the lanes and
fields, where I aliht3 to observe when I suspected them coupled by the obscurity
of their liht. In the year 1692, I put one into my box and it coupled presently,
tho' the box was open ; which male drop't on the table near it ; and, the same
year, I found them coupled in my grass-plat and, several summers since, in the
roads and fields. And, one time, I found this flying male a little luminous.
And, therefore, I think it clear, having had several flying ones which never
coupled among themselves.
[The eyes of the males, he adds,] are almost all that is seen of the head and
placed underneath. The light of the female is for the male to find them by.
About the same time (1692), Allen discovered a Death-watch
Beetle (Anobium tessellatum), of which he says4:—" I showed it to
Mr. Ray while it was yet alive and did beat." Again, on the
29th June 1693, Allen captured a specimen of some strange
insect, which Ray has recorded.''
In January 1697-8, however, events occurred which, for a
time at least, slightly estranged the two men. Allen, writing of
dreams, says (p. 203) :—
I have had notice [by means of dreams] of several extraordinary patients'
deaths.
A little before Mary Ray [Kay's daughter] dy'd,6 about a fortnight or three
weeks or less, I dreamt, in a morning, as before, I was walking with Mr. Ray
down Rain Lane7 and, seeing an apple-tree, [I] pickt one [i.e., an apple] before
1 Nat. Hist. of Mineral Waters, p. 101-104 (1711).
2Allen, in his Common-Place Book, referring to Ray's inference, says (p. 258) that "Mr.
Ray desired me to back it with my demonstration."
3 Alighted from his horse, he means.
4 Philos. Trans., xx , p. 376 (1699).
5 Hist. Insectorum, p. 167 (1710).
6 She died in January 1697-8.
7 The lane from Braintree to Ravne—part of the old Roman Road known as "Stane
Street."