Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

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The Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge FRS (November 3, 1828 - March 9, 1917) was an English clergyman and zoologist.

Pickard-Cambridge was born in Bloxworth rectory, Dorset. He studied theology at the University of Durham, and became a vicar in 1858, succeeding his father at Bloxworth in 1868.

His main interest was in spiders, though he wrote also on birds and lepidoptera (butterflys and moths). This passion for arachnids was probably fostered in 1854 in which year he both accompanied the entomologist Frederick Bond on a visit to the New Forest in Hampshire and was introduced to the writings of the arachnologist John Blackwall, with whom he struck up a correspondence, meeting first in 1860. Pickard-Cambridge assisted Blackwall between 1861 and 1864 in the publication of Blackwell's great work, British and Irish Spiders.

Pickard-Cambridge himself published extensively on spiders between 1859 and his death in 1917, his major work being the volume on arachnids in the Biologia Centrali-Americanii between 1883 and 1902. Of his other works, the Spiders of Dorset was perhaps his best-known, much of his other writing being in the form of papers in the Zoologist, the journals of the Linnean Society and the Zoological Society and in the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club. He became a world authority on spiders, describing a considerable number of new species including the highly venomous Sydney funnel-web spider and the Chilean rose tarantula.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on September 9, 1887. On his death, his collection and library were bequeathed to the University of Oxford.

Pickard-Cambridge married Rose Wallace in 1866, and they had six sons. Among them were the classicist and composer William Adair Pickard-Cambridge (January 20, 1873 - February 7, 1952) and the classicist Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge (December 14, 1879 - March 4, 1957), one of the greatest authorities on the Greek theatre in the first half of the 20th century.

His nephew, Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, (*1860), was also a noted arachnologist. He is often confused with his uncle.

[edit] Works

The Spiders of Dorset: From the 'Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club.' (Sherbourne, 1879-82)

Araneidea. Scientific Results of the Second Yarkand Mission. (Calcutta, 1885)

Monograph of the British Phalangidea or Harvest-Men. (Dorchester, 1890)

[edit] References and Further Reading

• Pickard-Cambridge, Sir Arthur W. (1918), Memoir of the Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge. Printed for Private Circulation, Oxford.

• "E B P" (1919), 'Obituary', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B 1919-1920 vol. 91 pp. xlix-liii JSTOR access to article