BY D. EMBLETON, M.D. 9 



home a valuable collection of bircl-sliins, Icpidoptera, plants, etc. 



For the edition of Bewick's "British Birds," published in 

 1847, he drew up the Synopsis and revised the nomenclature of 

 the book. 



He contributed to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 

 a series of Stuffed Birds, three of which were illustrative of 

 Falconry, and single specimens, namely, of the Lammergeicr, 

 from Switzerland, and the Dead Gull. They were all highly 

 admired by naturalists, artists, and the public as a signal advance 

 upon previous performances, showing not only, as it were, the 

 creatures brought to life again, but exhibiting to the best ad- 

 vantage the heightened artistic and manipulative skill of the 

 taxidermist. Of these articles the Athenceum of June 21st, 1851, 

 says, dilating on the necessity of artistic feeling being combined 

 with a thorough knowledge of all the details of taxidermy, 

 "No one can look at the beautiful specimens of prepared ani- 

 mals by Mr. John Hancock, of Newcastle, exhibited in the 

 transept, without recognising the mind of the artist as well as 

 the hand of the taxidermist." 



Of these groups, the late Eev. T. W. Eobertson, of Brighton, 

 thus spoke in one of his lectures : — " I have visited the finest 

 museums in Europe, and spent many a long day in the woods, 

 in watching the habits of birds, hidden and unseen by them, 

 but I never saw the reproduction of life till I saw these. They 

 were vitalized, not by the feeling of the mere bird stuffer, but 

 of the poet, who had sympathised with Nature, felt the life of 

 birds as something kindred with his own, and, inspired with 

 their sympathy, and labouring to utter it, had thus recreated 

 life, as it were, within the very grasp of death." 



Mr. E. Bowdler Sharp, in a paper published in the "English 

 Illustrated Magazine of Ornithology," at South Kensington, said 

 that to Mr. Hancock was due the credit of having broken away 

 from the time-honoured tradition in the mode of mounting ani- 

 mals in this country — that he taught how to combine scientific 

 accuracy with artistic feeling, and that Mr. Hancock's name 

 was a password throughout England wherever taxidermy was 

 mentioned. 



