Letters, Extracts, Notices, i;c. 153 



Obituaiy. John Hancock. — By the death of Mr. John 

 Hancock, which occurred at Newcastle-upoii-Tyue, on the 

 11th o£ Octoher last, we have lost an ornithologist of a kind 

 almost unique, and another of the few links which still con- 

 nect us with our predecessors of the end of the last and 

 beginning of the present century has been broken. Though 

 no less venerable for his age — he was 84 years old — than for 

 his character, he was personally known to but few outside 

 of the town in which he so long lived. There, however, he 

 had many friends, even before he had enriched its Museum 

 with the fine ornithological collection he bestowed upon it in 

 1884. Losing his father, who was a tradesman in New- 

 castle, while yet a child, John Hancock received but a poor 

 education, a deficiency deeply felt by him in after years, 

 and doubtless one of the reasons why it was only with the 

 greatest difiiculty that he could be induced to lay before the 

 public any of the store of knowledge which he possessed. 

 It is said, and can well be believed, that he, like his brother 

 Albany (who rose to so great scientific fame), w^as from his 

 boyhood devoted to the study of Natural History, and never 

 lost an opportunity of prosecuting it that the intervals o£ 

 business presented. In 1826 Bewick 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 are 

 beginning to recognize, 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 been 

 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 effect that is in many cases marvellous, 

 while even the few blocks which, through original defect in 

 the wood, had become worn, present no worse figures than 

 they had done before. In the spring of 1833, John Han- 

 cock, with another friend, accompanied the late Mr. Hewit- 

 son on a birds'-nesting expedition to Norway, the results of 

 which were made known by the last-named gentleman in his 

 well-known oological work, and briefly, though more con- 



SER. VI. VOL. Ill, M 



