156 Letter's, Exti'acts, Notices, S)C. 



made a similar attempt to illustrate life in death ; but, as 

 was noticed at the time in these pages (Ibis, 1862, p. 283), 

 the Commissioners refused him the space he required, and 

 the beautiful groups he had prepared remained for a long 

 while known only to his private friends. They have now 

 been placed in the Newcastle Museum^, for which he in 

 his later years unceasingly laboured, restoring, with that 

 patient skill of which he was so great a master, many of 

 its historic specimens that had come from the Allan and 

 Tunstall collections more than a century ago, and adding 

 others from his own stores set up with a regard to truth and 

 feeling that more than one much vaunted assemblage of 

 mounted groups fails to approach. Indeed, of Hancock's 

 performances it may be said that, unequal as they may be, 

 the worst of them never looks like a stuffed bird — the attitude 

 of some may be ungraceful or possibly forced, but life is 

 always there. In 1874, Hancock brought out his most con- 

 siderable literary work, and that by which he will always be 

 remembered, the ' Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland 

 and Durham,' though it seems somehow to have escaped the 

 notice of the then Editor of this Journal. It is an unpre- 

 tentious, sound piece of work ; its statements as to fact may, 

 we believe, be always trusted, and though assent may be 

 reserved in regard to some of its author's opinions, they are 

 always worthy of attention as coming from a very original 

 mind. 



It may here be remarked that in the ' Bibliographia 

 Zoologiae ' compiled by Agassiz and edited by Strickland for 

 the Ray Society, the few publications (three only) of Mr. 

 John Hancock, therein entered, are ascribed to a namesake 

 of his ; and the mistake, of which he was aware, but was wholly 

 indifferent about, has not been corrected by Carus and 

 Engelmann in their ' Bibliotheca Zoologica.' 



* The group of Swans attacked by an Eagle is said to have given 

 Landseer the idea of one of his celebrated pictures ; but there is this 

 difference between the work of the two artists — the scene executed by 

 Hancock, though fanciful, is possible, that painted by Landseer is 

 impossible. 



