J!Y D. EMBLETON, M.D. 19 



boys to train and fly both the Peregrine and Merlin, and in 

 after years we used to fly the latter Hawk with our old friend 

 on the Newcastle Town Moor. To collect birds, shells, and 

 other Natural History objects he also taught us ; and during 

 my wanderings in all parts of the world I have always felt 

 the greatest gratitude to my old friend for the tastes and pur- 

 suits he instilled, and which have been of the greatest benefit 

 and pleasure in whatever part of the world I have found my- 

 self." 



His habits of life at home were of an almost Spartan simplicity 

 and temperance. "When at Oatlands, in 1886, he suffered a 

 partial paralysis of his left side, which never passed away or 

 was repeated, but acted as a drag upon his bodily and mental 

 powers. As his strength declined he had an attack of cystitis, 

 which at the end of eleven months proved fatal. During those 

 months he became irritable, suffering much pain at times, and 

 his early passionate nature reasserted itself now and then. At 

 the end he was quite calm, and fully conscious of the near ap- 

 proach of death. 



On the 14th of October he was interred in Old Jesmond 

 Cemetery, in a vault with his brothers Albany and Henry and 

 his sister Ellen. An inscribed granite slab covers them. Among 

 the large number of his friends present at the funeral were five 

 octogenarians. 



His life-long friend, W. C. Hewitson, who died in May, 1878, 

 bequeathed his charming place at Oatlands, Surrey, to John, 

 who took up his abode there in the autumn of the same year, 

 and both he and his sister had much enjoyment in their summer's 

 residence in the South of England as a change from the atmos- 

 phere of Newcastle. 



It may be that many of his friends will desire to raise a 

 Memorial to a man who has done so much for the fame of his 

 native town and for the Natural History of the district, and this 

 is only fitting. There is one memorial, the last step in the 

 establishment of this Museum, and one very appropriate to this 

 occasion; one which John Hancock himself much longed for, 

 and which he greatly regretted not being able to obtain, as the 



