COXTRIBUTORS TO THE FIRST SERIES OF ^ THE IBIS.^ 177 



Mr. JOHN HANCOCK. 



By tlie death of John Hancock, which occurred at 

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, on the 11th of October, 1890, there 

 was lost an ornithologist of a kind almost unique, and another 

 of the few links which still connect us, with our predecessors 

 of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth 

 century has been broken. Though no less venerable for his 

 age — he was 84 years old — than for his character, he was per- 

 sonally known to but few outside of the town in which he so 

 long lived. There, however, he had many friends, even before 

 he enriched its Museum wath the fine ornithological collection 

 he bestowed upon it in 1881. Losing his father, who was a 

 tradesman in Newcastle, while yet a child, John Hancock 

 received but a poor education, a deficiency de>-'ply felt by him 

 in after years, and doubtless one of the reasons why it was 

 only with the greatest difficulty that he could be induced to 

 lay before the public any of the store of knowledge w^hich he 

 possessed. It is said, and can be well believed, that he, like 

 his brother Albany (who rose to so great scientific fame), 

 was from his boyhood devoted to the study of Natural His- 

 tory, and never lost an opportunity of prosecuting it that 

 the intervals of business presented. In 18.26 Bewdck wrote 

 of him as " a young friend and promising naturalist " ; 

 and just twenty-one years after Hancock superintended a 

 new edition of the famous ' British Birds,'' the value of 

 which people now fully recognise, for owing to the care 

 taken, first in cleaning the old blocks, and then in printing 

 from them with the best of ink — ink of inferior quality 

 having bean previously used, and especially in the earlier 

 issues, which command so high a price, — fine details of 

 engraving, the existence of which had hardly been suspected 

 before, became manifest with an eff"ect that is in many cases 

 marvellous, while even the few blocks which, through original 



