XIV THE HANCOCK MUSEUM AND ITS HISTORY 



build a new museum. The project was, on the face of It, 

 beset with difficulties, and the credit for the surprising success 

 with which it was eventually carried out is incontestably due 

 in the main to the energy of one man, John Hancock. 



John Hancock. 



No account of the museum could well be given without 

 some reference to John Hancock, one of the notable men that 

 Newcastle has produced. Born in 1808, in a house at the 

 nortli end of the Tyne Bridge, he inherited from his father a 

 keen love of nature, and his whole life was devoted to his 

 favourite pursuits, especially to the study of birds. As a 

 practical ornithologist his reputation, in spite of his retiring 

 disposition, came to be of the very highest order. Fortunately 

 for his contemporaries and successors he took to taxidermy, 

 so that much of his knowledge and experience finds a material 

 embodiment in his wonderful collection ; and being a born 

 artist as well as a close observer, he soon began to achieve 

 successes such as had not been dreamt of previously, and 

 which did much to raise the general level of the bird-stuffer's 



