MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN HANCOCK. 445 



Jerfalcons, illustrating his instructive remarks by the production 

 of specimens which he handled as tenderly as if they had been 

 delicate flowers.* Hybrid Grouse, Ducks, Seafowl from the 

 Northumberland shores and islands, and the eggs of many of 

 them collected by himself in Scotland and Norway, were all 

 examined and admired in turn ; while we inspected with a kind 

 of reverential awe some of the very specimens which had been 

 handled by Bewick, and engraved by him for his inimitable work 

 on British birds. The examples of Hancock's own skill as a 

 taxidermist were particularly striking, from their marked 

 departure from conventional types, and from his successful 

 attempt to represent birds in action. Some of his groups of 

 birds in the Museum at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and others which we 

 have since seen at Exeter and Bath, have in our opinion for 

 their life-like appearance never been excelled. But this, of course, 

 amongst ornithologists is a matter of notoriety. His drawings 

 were not so good. The illustrations to his 'Catalogue of the 

 Birds of Northumberland and Durham,' published in 1874, 

 coming as they do from his own hand, are very disappointing, 

 some of them being stiff and unnatural in their pose, quite 

 unlike the skilfully- stuffed specimens in the Museum. The best 

 of these drawings is that of Alca impennis, the Great Auk, from 

 an adult bird in summer plumage purchased on the Continent 

 by Hancock in 1844, and since presented by him to the Newcastle 

 Museum. It is remarkable for having been most successfully 

 re-stuffed and re-modelled by Hancock, who extracted all the bones 

 which had been left in the skin originally, and which are now 

 exhibited side by side with it. The mention of this interesting 

 bird, of which another and immature specimen is preserved in the 

 Newcastle Museum, reminds us of Hancock's skill in modelling. 

 On the occasion of our visit he opened a drawer in his egg- 

 cabinet in which were, to all appearance, a dozen eggs of the 

 Great Auk ! Noticing our start of astonishment, he exclaimed, 

 " Don't be surprised, only one of those is genuine ; which is it?" 

 We were unable to say ; so closely had he imitated eleven genuine 

 eggs which had been lent him for the purpose by various owners. 



* His views on the different species or races of Jerfalcon will be found 

 stated in Brit. Assoc. Eeports, 1838, pt. ii., p. 10G ; Ann. Nat. Hist. 1839, 

 pp. 241—250, and 1854, pp. 110—112. 



