XXIV ENDOWMENT FUND 



REPRINT OF CIRCULAR APPEALING FOR DONATIONS 

 TO THE ENDOWMENT FUND. 



Hancock Museum, 



Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 



May, 1914. 



The citizens of Tyneside and the North and a very extensive 

 circle in all parts of the world are proud of the Hancock 

 Museum. Local people whose privilege it was to know them, 

 either in person or through their work, are proud of the men 

 who as pioneers in this district laid the foundation of an 

 intelligent study of Nature — John Hancock himself, whose 

 intuitive appreciation of the nature of birds was a revelation 

 to many in his lifetime and is embodied in his magnificent 

 collection for the instruction and delight of all later genera- 

 tions ; his brother Albany Hancock and their friend Joshua 

 Alder, whose patient and brilliant work on marine forms of 

 life has made their joint names famous in the history of 

 zoological science ; the brothers George and Henry Bowman 

 Brady, whose reputation caused them to be selected to report 

 on two important classes of the collections brought home by 

 the Challenger Expedition, the most momentous scientific 

 undertaking of the last century ; William Chapman Hewitson, 

 in his time the leading authority on birds' eggs and on the 

 butterflies of the world ; Daniel Oliver, who, beginning as a 

 local amateur, became a head official at Kew and one 

 of the leading botanists of the world ; William Hutton, the 

 celebrated early geologist after whom one of the chief coal 

 seams of this district is named, and whose collection of fossil 

 plants is still constantly consulted by the greatest modern 

 authorities; Thomas Atthey, whose stone floor kitchen at 

 Gosforth was a veritable Mecca to scientists from all parts 

 of the world, and whose exquisitely prepared fossils from the 

 Low Main shale now form the most important source of 

 information in the world regarding the higher forms of life of 

 the coal period. 



