Though possessing a decided gift of acquiring languages, as his very perfect knowledge of Latin, French, and German testified, Hance declined to study Chinese, and hence obtained little promotion. He devoted all his leisure to botanical studies, and thus added greatly to our knowledge of the flora of China. Among his papers, contributed to Hooker's 'Journal of Botany,' were: 1. 'On some new Chinese Plants.' 2. 'On some Chinese Plants.' 3 'Notes on new and little known Plants in China.' He added a supplement to Bentham's 'Flora Hongkongensis,' containing seventy-five new species of plants, and was a constant contributor to the 'Journal of Botany,' the 'Proceedings of the Linnean Society,' the 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles,'and other scientific journals. Sir Joseph Hooker says: 'With regard to Dr. Hance's botanical attainments and the value of his labours, I can speak in very high terms. For upwards of forty years he devoted all his spare time to investigating the vegetation of China, displaying rare ability in mastering the technicalities of structural and descriptive botany, at the same time enriching the scientific journals in England with accounts of new plants of great interest, in a botanical and economic point of view. In all that he
attempted he aimed at critical accuracy in identification and diagnosis, and this he attained in an eminent degree, so that there is no possibility of failure in recognising from his descriptions the plants he had under examination.' In 1877 Hance was elected a member of the Imp. Leopoldino-Carolina Acad. Naturæ Curiosorum, one of the oldest scientific institutions in Germany, and he was also a fellow of the leading botanical societies in England and abroad. By the terms of his will his herbarium, consisting of over twenty-two thousand different species or varieties, has been offered to the trustees of the British Museum.
[Journal of Botany, British and Foreign, ed. James Britten, F.L.S., No. 289, January 1887.]
HANCKWITZ, AMBROSE GODFREY (d. 1741), chemist. [See Godfrey, Ambrose.]
HANCOCK, ALBANY (1806–1873), zoologist, was second son and third child of John Hancock, a saddler and ironmonger of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a man of exceptional cultivation, possessing a microscope and a small library containing works of Pliny, Linnæus, Lister, Donovan, and Bewick, and the 'Philosophical Transactions.' John Hancock had also made collections of plants, insects, and especially of shells, and though he died when Albany was six years old, so thoroughly did his widow carry on his teaching that, of their six children, four devoted themselves to the study of natural history. Of these Thomas studied geology, Mary devoted herself to drawing natural history objects, and John and Albany are best known as zoologists. There was some Huguenot blood, of Lorraine, and more remotely of Bohemian, origin, in the family. Albany was born at Bridge End, Newcastle, on Christmas eve, 1806, received a good education as times then went, and was articled to a solicitor in Newcastle when nineteen. Though the occupation was uncongenial, after serving his time he took an office over the shop of his friend, Joshua Alder [q. v.], to await practice on his own account in 1830. He had already in the previous year become one of the original members of the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle, and communicated some notes to Alder's 'Catalogue of Land and Freshwater Shells,' published in 1830. He soon abandoned the law, and joined a manufacturing firm; but this proved no more to his taste. His associates were Thomas Bewick [q. v.], who died in 1828, William Robertson, an able botanist, his neighbour Alder, and Wingate, an ornithologist; and subsequently William Hutton, John Thornhill, and R. B. Bowman, all botanists, W. C. Hewitson and Dr. D. Embleton, zoologists, and Thomas Atthey and Richard Howse, palæontologists. A correspondence is extant, dating from 1832, with Dr. (afterwards Sir) W. J. Hooker, then professor at Glasgow, and Dr. Johnston, the marine zoologist of Berwick, with reference to a proposed quarto work on British birds, some of the plates for which Hancock's brother John had already executed. Though this work was never carried out, it bore fruit in the magnificent John Hancock collection of birds now in the Natural History Museum at Newcastle. Clever with his fingers from boyhood, Hancock from 1835 to 1840 devoted his time very largely to modelling in clay and plaster.
The first of the long list of his scientific papers, of which over seventy appear in the Royal Society's Catalogue, bears date 1836. These are short notes on birds in Jardine's 'Magazine of Zoology and Botany.' The great work of his life began in his association about 1842 with Alder in the study of the mollusca. The main result of this partnership was the 'Monograph of British Nudibranchiate Mollusca,' published by the Ray Society between 1845 and 1855. In this work many of the descriptions and most of the drawings for the eighty-three coloured plates, including all those that are anatomical, are the work of
