DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE, 163
In spite of all th is, the oft-warned young man contrived to live
till May, when he died.
A few months later, on 7th December 1725, at half-past nine
in the morning, an incident which he regarded as a direct inter-
position of Providence saved Allen's life as he was about to
cross the Thames by boat from Lambeth in order to sign the
deeds of some houses he had bought from a Mr. Draper. But
for this warning, he says (p. 205), he would have
been drowned in the Thames, in a squall so sudden that, had I gone two boat's
lengths from the shore, I could not [have] recovered it, for so several boats were
overturned and people drowned. I was in the boat, one boat's length [from the
shore, when there came] two flashes of lightening in my face ; and the old
waterman, seeing it in the north-west, by a north cloud lying along, bid me see
it myself: he dare not go. The lightening and my choice of an experienced and
observant waterman, that had been in India, &c., many times, were not disposed
by me.
Elsewhere, Allen notes twice over (pp. 206 and 346) that
Queen Ann died on the day on which an Act against dissenters
and another for transporting poor children came into force—
evidently cause and effect ! He notes also (p. 347) that the
execution of the Jacobite Lords, on 24 February 1716, was
followed on 6 March by auroras—evidently a sign of heavenly
disapproval! Again, he regards the death of 80,000 people at
Marseilles through the plague (p. 348) as retribution because
Protestants had been "put to the galleys" there shortly before !
To us, as naturalists, no part of Allen's book is of greater
interest than that in which he has entered his observations on
Natural History. It extends to rather over fifty pages (211-263)
and includes several hundred pen sketches of "Insects"—a
term to which he gave a much wider application than we do
now. There are also many notes (which lack, however, that
definiteness which would give them value in the eyes of a
modern naturalist), a "Commentary" on the notes, and an
"Index to Insects." These notes appear to have been written
between the years 1715 and 1730 or thereabouts.
Allen begins by noticing that well-known "insect" the
Oyster, of which we find several anatomical drawings and this
information :—
The Brittish are the best of the world, for the Romans sent hither for them
against their great feasts ; and the best of Brittish is the Pyfleet [obtained] on the
coast of Essex, between Colne River and Mersey Isle, in a strait. [Those of] Colne
River are good, but not so fine. The next are a small oyster at Wallfleet on