120 LIFE OF ALBANY HANCOCK, BY BE. EMBLETON. 



county, and given the names of physicians before his time who 

 had largely studied the Botany of the district. 



About the year 1780 or 1781 the Tunstal Museum, at Wyclifle, 

 on the Tees, was established by Marmaduke Tunstal, Esq., who 

 also printed a short Ornithologia Britannica. The Museum, in 

 1791, became the property of Geo. Allan, Esq., of Darlington, 

 from whose executors it was purchased for the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society, in 1822. 



Thomas Bewick, the celebrated wood engraver, was offered the 

 the use of the specimens, both by Mr. Tunstall and Mr. Allan, 

 and many of his drawings were made from the specimens of the 

 Tunstall Museum, when at Wycliife or at Darlington. 



His works on Quadrupeds, 1790, and British Birds, 1797, 

 mark an epoch not only in wood engraving, but in the progress 

 of Natural History over the whole country. 



Who, especially in his youth, has not eagerly devoured those 

 volumes of Quadrupeds and Birds, in some one or other of their 

 various editions, and learned to love the creatures so faithfully 

 represented in their pages ? and, then, the tail-pieces ! what a vein 

 of humour and of pathos runs through them, illustrative all the 

 while, as they are, of the scenery, and of the habits and customs 

 of Tyneside men, women, children, and animals, nearly a hun- 

 dred years ago ! Who has not often lingered on them with de- 

 light, and returned to them again with renewed zest ? It is not 

 affirming too much when it is said that Bewick's books, includ- 

 ing the Fables, 1818, and others, have done more to attract and 

 to fix attention and regard to animals than the works of any other 

 author. They have been the delight of boy- and man-hood for 

 three generations, and yet nothing adequate to his merits has 

 been done to honour the memory of this benefactor of mankind. 



In this digression on the course of Natural History studies in 

 Northumberland and Durham must not be omitted to be favour- 

 ably mentioned Selby's " Catalogue of Birds" and his " Illustra- 

 tions of British Ornithology;" the former published in 1831, 

 the latter in 1833. 



John Hancock, and his friends above alluded to, were contem- 

 porary with Bewick, but worked in the departments of Botany, 



