Obituary — Albany Sancock. , 575 



Sub-Wealden boring, wliicli I gave to Professor Phillips at Bradford, 

 and which enabled him to report in Nature of Oct. 9th, that the 

 boring was in Kimmeridge Clay.^ This shell is characteristic of that 

 formation at Shotover Hill, near Oxford, and at Ely, near Cambridge, 

 and Mr. Davidson tells me that the Boulogne specimen is the same 

 size as those from the above-named places, viz. about |^ inch in length, 

 and -I inch in breadth, but the " sub-Wealden" Lingula is remarkable 

 for being only about ^ inch in length. 



T have since found two or three other specimens, and they are all 

 of the same diminutive size : it may possibly be that they are young 

 ones. 



I hope soon to hear of some more good specimens turning up 

 both from the boring and the Boulogne Cliffs. 



St. I.eonakds, Mv. 3, 1873. JoHN E. H. Peyton. 



P.S. — Since writing the above, I have found the following addi- 

 tional fossils from the Sub-Wealden boring ; depth about 300 feet : — 

 a Patella latissima, an Ostrcea, a Pecten, and a Modiola. They were 

 shown to some of the Committee in Jermyn Street, and pronounced 

 to be Kimmeridge Clay fossils ; thus confirming Prof. Phillips's 

 announcement in Nature, alluded to above. 



Nov. 21. J. E. H. P. 



OBITTJJLE;:^-. 



Albany Hancock. — Zoologists have seldom had to mourn a greater 

 loss than that which they have sustained by the death of Albany 

 Hancock ; and, as is so often the case when a scientific man of the 

 first rank leaves this life, one subdivision of the sciences is not alone 

 affected by it. Palaeontology has also lost in Mr. Hancock an earnest 

 and clear-sighted worker, and may be said to have reaped almost the 

 last fruits of his labours. It is as a palaeontologist that he must be 

 commemorated here, and a glance at the accompanying list of his 

 papers on ancient forms will show that the range of his knowledge 

 as such gave him an indisputable right to the title. 



Mr. Hancock was born in Newcastle in 1806, and died there on 

 the 24th of last October. His life was, in the ordinary sense of the 

 term, singularl}'- uneventful. Scarcely ever did he leave his birth- 

 place, which, with the dales and fells in its neighbourhood, he loved 

 as north countrymen can, never did he forsake his pure naturalist's 

 work. Each year of his manhood was marked by the discovery, 

 accurate observation, and ever modest publication of new and 

 important facts in Biology. His work speaks for itself; but the 

 spirit in which he worked, his intense love of Nature for her own 

 sake, his unaffected shrinking from honours which were forced upon 

 bim, his readiness to impart his knowledge or to give all help to the 

 humblest beginner who was willing to work, his contempt of the 

 so-called pojmlar science of blatant sciolists, his life-long friendships, 

 — all these must not pass away unrecorded. They cannot pass away 

 unremembered by any one who knew him. 



By Albany Hancock's death the small but strong circle of natur- 



^ See also letter from Prof. Phillips in Geol. Mag. for November, p. 627. 



