DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE. 153
reference to a butterfly (apparently Parnassius apollo) which
was "taken on the Alps by Mr. Ray." Elsewhere (p. 362), dis-
cussing the best way to make ink, Allen says : "Mr. Ray's
receipt puts in too much copperas and rather too little gum"
Other similar passages are noticed hereafter. Again, Allen,
writing of the method used by the great physician van Hel-
mont for curing gout, says1 :—
Mr. Ray inform'd me he was assur'd by his son, the younger Helmont,2 when he
was desir'd to come to Leez to assist [i.e., attend] the late Earl of Warwick, to
find the true Hellebour niger vents, to which Helmont, who was brought by the
great Mr. Boyl, in that disease, had advis'd him, as what his father us'd, and
nothing else, in that disease, with which he was often afflicted.3
Nevertheless, it seems clear that the friendship between Ray
and Allen was at all times far less intimate than that between
Ray and Dale, for Ray appointed Dale executor under his will.
As for Dale and Allen—men of the same profession, almost
of the same age, and living in the same small town—they must
have known each other well, but evidence as to the extent of the
friendship between them is scanty. Allen, writing in 1711,
speaks4 of "a journey to Harwich to see marine plants"—a
journey made no doubt in company with Dale, who must have
visited Harwich many times to collect the material necessary for
his exhaustive work on the history and natural productions of
Salamanticum Magnum," or Spanish Catch-fly (Silene otites). Later, however. Ray came to
the conclusion that the wrong plant had been sent to him and that that which had really
cured the King's hounds, under the name of the "Star of the Earth," was the plant now
known as the Buck's-horn Plantain, Plantago corouopus (see Philos. Trans., xl. p. 453 : 1738.
The Rev. Thomas Stuart, of Bury St Edmunds, who investigated the question many years
later, says (op. cit., p. 450) that he had conferred with his friend Samuel Dale, of Braintree.
and had referred to works in Dale's "well-furnished botanic library" Both had come to
the conclusion (he says) that the plant in question was really that last mentioned. Allen
had, no doubt, heard of the matter from and discussed it with both Ray and Dale. Mr. J. C.
Shenstone informs me that one species of the genus (P. major) was much used, down to
comparatively-recent times, as an astringent and styptic, and that it is referred to as possess-
ing these properties by Shakespeare, Shenstone the poet, and other old writers. It Is probable,
therefore, that P. corouopus possesses the same properties.
1 Nat. Hist, of Mineral Waters, Epist. Pref., p. [vit.] (1711).
2 J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was born at Brussels. His son, F. M. van Helmont
(1618-1699), was also an eminent physician and chemist.
3 So far as one can make out from Allen's very confused statement, it was the younger
Van Helmont who, at the instance of the Hon. Robert Boyle, attended Charles fourth Earl
of Warwick, at Leez, when he was ill with the gout, from which he died in 1673, though
nothing relating to the matter appears in Miss C. Fell Smith's Mary Rich, Countess of
Warwick (1901), wherein much is stated in reference to the earl's illness; further that van
Helmont found growing there the Helleborus niger ; that, either whilst at Leez or afterwards,
he had told Ray that this was the plant his father (van Helmont. senior) had always solely
used in treating the gout, with which he himself had been often troubled ; and that Ray had
afterwards repeated these facts to Allen. Mr. J. C. Shenstone has been kind enough to inform
me that all the Hellebores were well known and used formerly as purgatives and emmenagogues;
but that, in recent days, they have fallen out of use, owing to the violence of their action.
The mildest in action was H. niger, the plant here mentioned, which remained in use almost
to our own day
4 Mineral Waters, p. 9 (1711).