XXVI ENDOWMENT FUND 



these collections, to show a like appreciation by sub- 

 scribing ^^25,000 at least as an endowment fund, so that 

 the collections themselves, their care and further study, may 

 be placed beyond all possibility of neglect. 



The originators of the great industries which have so 

 enormously increased the productiveness and wealth of the 

 Tyneside and adjacent districts were the friends and admirers 

 and daily companions of the men who founded the Hancock 

 Museum, and it is no flight of imagination to suggest that in 

 some measure their success was due to the spirit of these men. 

 The local wealth today is immeasurably greater than it was 

 in the eighties, and it is surely not too much to ask the in- 

 heritors and possessors of the wealth at the present time to 

 give at least one-half of what their ancestors did thirty years 

 ago. The late John Hancock was under no illusion as to the 

 necessity for the creation of such a fund, seeing that in 1888 

 he made an appeal for a " Maintenance Fund," but it was 

 then probably too near to the great effort of building the 

 Museum for it to meet with the response he desired. Had he 

 lived longer, however, there is no doubt such a fund would 

 have been created. 



We confidently appeal to your generosity to give us such a 

 donation that so far as you are concerned the Hancock 

 Museum of the future shall be worthy of its past and of the 

 great reputation of the naturalists, past and present, of 

 Tyneside. 



Yours very truly, 



JOICEY, President. 



