Letters, Extracts, Notices, 8fc. 155 



unknown to Hancock — was the specific distinctness of Cyg- 

 nus bewicki. As unfortunately so often happens in such 

 cases, some unpleasantness arose out of the circumstances. 

 Yarrell, partly through a proper exercise of caution, and not 

 suspecting that anyone else was likely to meet with speci- 

 mens of his newly-found Swan, deferred its description until 

 after it had come to the notice of the northern ornithologists, 

 Wingate and Hancock ; but it is especially due to the 

 acumen of the latter that the specific validity of Bewick's 

 Swan was recognized. Whether tidings of the fact reached 

 Yarrell, and prompted him to make known the information 

 he had possessed for some four or five years, matters little. 

 If it were so, he was certainly justifying his rights; but 

 those who are curious in such trivial matters may read the 

 charge and the defence in the ' Philosophical Magazine ' 

 (new ser. viii. pp. 128-130 and 167-169). The whole inci- 

 dent is much to be regretted, and in nothing more than that 

 Hancock thence conceived the ornithologists of the south of 

 England to be jealous of him — an idea, we are sure, that 

 was utterly mistaken, as was shown by the welcome they 

 gave to his handiwork. 



For many years Hancock had been attempting to raise 

 ." taxidermy " to an art. He knew how a bird should look, 

 and having the eye had also the hand of an artist, so that 

 he could mount a dried skin and endue it with the spirit of 

 life. Other men doubtless may have tried to do the like, 

 but for lack of the knowledge that comes of observation and 

 the delicacy of manipulation that seems to be inborn, per- 

 haps no one except Mr. Waterton had succeeded. There 

 are still some among us that remember with pleasure Han- 

 cock's contributions to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where, 

 placed in the central transept, they were always surrounded 

 by admirers, and at the end went unrewarded ! One of 

 them at least — but that by no means the best — may now be 

 seen in the Natural History portion of the British Museum 

 in Cromwell Road, it having been bequeathed to the Trustees 

 by Mr. Hewitsou, who had become its possessor. On the 

 occasion of the International Exhibition of 1862, Hancock 



