Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

This article is about the older arachnologist. For his nephew who was also an arachnologist, see Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge.

Octavius Pickard-Cambridge
The Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, around 1891
Born	November 3, 1828(1828-11-03) Bloxworth, Dorset, England
Died	March 9, 1917(1917-03-09) (aged 88)
Nationality	British
Education	University of Durham
Occupation	clergyman and zoologist
Spouse	Rose Wallace

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, the fifth son of Revd George Pickard, rector and squire of Bloxworth: the family changed their name to Pickard-Cambridge in 1848. Octavius was tutored at home by William Barnes, then studied theology at the University of Durham. He was ordained in 1858, succeeding his father at Bloxworth in 1868. In 1857 he presented the Pickard-Cambridge Challenge Cup to University College Boating Club, University of Durham for a skiff race; it was re-presented in 1895 for college second trial fours.^[1]

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 Costa Rican redleg tarantula (Megaphobema mesomelas) and the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus).

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 (December 14, 1879 - March 4, 1957) and the classicist Sir Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge (January 20, 1873 - February 7, 1952), one of the greatest authorities on the Greek theatre in the first half of the 20th century.

His nephew, Frederick Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, (1860–1905) was also a noted arachnologist.

Works

"Arachnida", in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Edition, Volume II (Edinburgh, 1875)

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)

References

1. ^ North-east Rowing Online

Further reading

• Castellum 2006: alumnus newsletter of the University College, Durham. Contains an article with extensive biographical notes and images.
• Pickard-Cambridge, Arthur Wallace, Sir, (1918). Memoir of the Reverend Octavius Pickard-Cambridge. Oxford: Printed for private circulation (retrieved from Internet Archive). 

• "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

Persondata
Name	Pickard-Cambridge, Octavius
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	November 3, 1828
Place of birth	Bloxworth, Dorset, England
Date of death	March 9, 1917
Place of death