Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

Infobox Person
name = Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge


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birth_date = 3 November, 1860
birth_place = Warmwell, Dorset
death_date = 1905 (disputed- see text)
death_place =
education = Sherborne and Oxford
occupation = Clergyman, illustrator, naturalist
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spouse =
parents =
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nationality = British
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Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge (November 3, 1860 - 1905) was an English arachnologist. He is often confused with his uncle, Octavius Pickard-Cambridge (1828 - 1917), who was also an arachnologist and from whom F. O. Pickard-Cambridge picked up his enthusiasm for the study of spiders.

Life

F. O. Pickard-Cambridge was born in Warmwell, Dorset where his father was rector. He became a curate in Carlisle for a few years after having been educated at Sherborne School and Oxford. He had a promising career ahead of him, but this promise was not to be fulfilled. Bristowe, writing in the book British Spiders, 1951, said of this time in his life:

Whilst he was still in his 30's, however, a marked change came over him which led to misfortune

He gave up the priesthood because of his extreme religious views, and became estranged from friends and family on account of his strong political opinions. This unfortunate new tendency also spilled over into his natural history work, and he had fierce arguments with other scientists over questions of nomenclature.

Work

F. O. Pickard-Cambridge's papers were published between 1889 and 1905, some posthumously. He worked on spiders from across the world, not just British ones, and as opposed to being a collector was more concerned with the study of specimens in reference collections and papers - work which was often passed over in previous decades when many new discoveries were being made by explorers and collectors. His work was largely taxonomic, consisting of a re-examination of the relationships between various species, including many described by his celebrated uncle. For example, he discovered several species which had been described more than once and so had more than one name, or, by contrast, more than one species which had only one name. He created several new genera and added sixteen species of spider to the British list.

His cousin Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, said of him in 1918

[He] was a born naturalist and a very clever and artistic draughtsman, and was capable of very rapid and effective worksometimes, indeed, too rapid, and marred by hasty conclusions and a tendency to treat the latest idea as if it were a new gospel, but almost always useful and suggestive; moreover, as a companion he was full of fun and resource. The extreme political and moral ideas which he felt it his duty to preach somewhat indiscriminately in the later years of his life ultimately brought about a partial severance between him and my father [O. Pickard-Cambridge] , but his early death was undoubtedly a loss to science as well as to those who had delighted in his companionship.

His papers, chiefly on foreign Arachnida, showed great ability, and it was he who undertook so much of the treatment of the Araneidea for the "Biologia Centrali-Americana" as my father could not complete by himself.

Later in his career he used his considerable skill as an illustrator to illustrate many books and papers on natural history and other subjects.

Death

The cited sources do not describe the nature of F. O. Pickard-Cambridge's death, other than to imply that it was not a natural one. Sources differ on the exact date of his death. Bristowe, writing in Locket & Millidge 1951, clearly gives his dates as 1860-1905. However, in his own book "The World of Spiders", published in 1958, Bristowe writes that F. O. Pickard-Cambridge's papers were published "between 1889 and 1905 (three years after his untimely death)".

In the "Proceedings of the Royal Society of London" F. O. Pickard-Cambridge was called 'a very able naturalist too early lost to science'.

References

*cite book
last=Bristowe
first=W.S.
authorlink=W. S. Bristowe
title=The World of Spiders
year=1958
publisher=Collins
location=London
*cite book
last=Locket
first=G.H.
coauthors=A.F. Millidge
authorlink=
title=British Spiders
year=1951
publisher=The Ray Society
location=London
*Obituary Notices of Fellows Deceased, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character, Vol. 91, No. 641 (Nov. 15, 1920), pp. i-xxxvii+xxxviii-liii
*cite book
last=Pickard-Cambridge
first=Arthur Wallace, Sir,
coauthors=
authorlink=
title=Memoir of the Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge
year=1918
publisher=Printed for private circulation ( [http://www.archive.org/details/memoirofreverend00pickuoft retrieved from Internet Archive] )
location=Oxford