LIFE OF ALBANY HANCOCK, BY BE. EMBLETON. 127 



In the paper on Doris was announced the discovery of the 

 existence in this and other closely allied Mollusks, of the sym- 

 pathetic or ganglionic system of nerves, and a nearly complete 

 description, with plates, of the extension of this system to all the 

 viscera, in Doris, was given. Up to 1850 no sympathetic nerv- 

 ous system had been described in any animal below the Verte- 

 brata, and it was therefore with peculiar pleasure and care that 

 the ramifications of this system were traced out and laid down. 

 Its presence in these creatures goes to show that the Mollusca 

 are more closely related than the Articulata to the Vertebrata, 

 and that therefore the transition from the Mollusca to these last 

 is not quite so abrupt as has been believed. 



During the period from 1845 to 1855 there appeared the justly 

 celebrated " Monograph of the British JNudi branchiate Mollusca, 

 with figures of the species, by Joshua Alder and Albany Han- 

 cock." This work, published by the Bay Society, soon gained 

 for its authors a more than European reputation. The descrip- 

 tions of external characters and the classification were the joint 

 work of Alder and Hancock, most of the drawings of the species 

 and the whole of those of the anatomy were by Hancock alone. 



The beauty of the drawings and the delicacy of the colouring 

 exhibited in this work it would be diflicult to surpass, and the 

 anatomical details are represented with a perfect fidelity to na- 

 ture. Albany rapidly surmounted the difficulties attendant on 

 the delicate dissection of microscopically minute parts ; in which 

 the breath, even, has to be held and regulated, and the hand 

 educated in the execution of the smallest possible movements . 

 and he readily gained an extensive acquaintance with the prin- 

 ciples and details of Comparative Anatomy. 



The Tyneside Naturalists' Eield Club was instituted in the 

 year 1846, and one of its foremost and best supporters was Albany 

 Hancock. The second paper in its Transactions, that " On the 

 existence of Limnoria terebrans at the mouth of the Tyne," was 

 by him. He afterwards contributed papers " On the Boring 

 Apparatus of the Carnivorous Gasteropods arid of the Stone and 

 Wood-burrowing Bivalves;" "On the Boring of the Mollusca, 

 as Teredo, Xylophaga, Pholas, etc., into Rocks, etc. ;" and " On 



