THE ZOOLOGIST, 



THIRD SERIES. 



Vol. XIV.] DECEMBEK, 1890. [No. J 68. 



MEMOIE OF THE LATE JOHN HANCOCK, OF 

 NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE. 



A train of old memories is awakened by the lamented death 

 of John Hancock, which took place at Newcastle on October 

 11th, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. To have known a 

 man who had conversed with Bewick, who was a contemporary 

 of Selby, Yarrell, St. John, and Hewitson, and who with his 

 brother, Albany Hancock, and his friends Joshua Alder, George 

 Johnstone, of Berwick-on-Tweed, and Kobert Embleton, helped 

 to found in 1846 the " Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club," was 

 indeed a privilege ; and by his death one of the last links of 

 the chain which bound us to those well-known pioneers of British 

 Zoology has come to be severed. 



He was the third son of Mr. John Hancock, saddler and iron- 

 monger at the Bridge End, Newcastle, and was born there in the 

 house above the shop about 1806. His father was a man of 

 cultivated tastes, an ardent student of Natural History, and 

 formed a good library and collections in the departments of 

 study to which he devoted himself. He died at the early age of 

 forty-three in 1812, leaving a widow and six children, of whom 

 the eldest was only eight years of age. In process of time her 

 eldest son Thomas and her third son John entered into the 

 business at the Bridge End, and for many years it was carried 

 on under the style of T. and J. Hancock. The younger brother 

 devoted himself especially to the study of Ornithology and 

 Entomology, and, with the co-operation of several of the friends 



ZOOLOGIST. DEC. 1890. 2 L 



