96 THE ENTOMOLdGIST. 



OcTAVius Pickabd-Cambridge, M.A., F.E.S. 



1828-1917. 



The Eev. Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, who died on March 9th 

 must have been the sole survivor of the brihiant coterie of entomo- 

 logists who made a name for themselves in the early Victorian days, 

 when it was the fashion to regard the student of lepidoptera as an 

 amiable lunatic, or at best " a spectacled dilettante."" An enthusi- 

 astic naturalist throughout his long life, he will be remembered 

 chiefly as premier authority on Arachnida — his principal study — 

 embodied in several important works, ' Specific Descriptions of Trap- 

 door Spiders,' ' The Spiders of Dorset,' and not least the article on 

 Arachnida which appeared in the ninth edition of the ' Encylopcedia 

 Britannica.' In addition to these works, the most important, perhaps, 

 is his share of the descriptions of the spiders — the greater part — in 

 the ' Biologia Centrali-Americana ' ; the account of the spiders of the 

 second Yarkand Mission ; and the two monographs on the British 

 Chernetidea and PhalanguUa — unique of their kind. He also pub- 

 lished every year, for over fifty years, an annual report of new and 

 rare species in various periodicals, the majority in the ' Proceedings 

 of the Dorset Field Club,' of which he was one of the moving spirits 

 ever since its foundation in 1875. As rector of Bloxworth and Winter- 

 borne Thomson, Dorset, for close upon half a century, he was placed 

 in a region well suited to his scientific tastes, and he made the most of 

 his opportunities. His first entomological contribution to the ' Zoo- 

 logist ' (1853), " On Robber Bees ; the Phenomenon thus denominated 

 attributed to the Presence of the Honey Moth," is dated from South- 

 port. In 1854 he recorded " The Transformations of Heliothis 

 dijjsacea," and in 1855 appeared an interesting paper on the much- 

 debated " Corporeal Sensations of Insects." Besides being the 

 captor of the sole British example of Hypena ohsitalis, his name is 

 famihar to lepidopterists of the present generation as being the first to 

 record Everes argiades as a British insect in the ' Entomologist ' (vol. 

 xviii, pp. 249-252). On August 18th, 1885, his son, Charles Owen, 

 captured a female on Bloxworth Heath, and two days later, while hunt- 

 ing together, his son Arthur turned up the second specimen, a male, 

 at the same spot. So far as I know we have no other eye-witness 

 account of argiades taken alive in this country, and after thirty-two 

 years we are forced to the reluctant conclusion that the " Bloxworth 

 Blue " has not established itself upon our shores ; nor is there reliable 

 evidence that the Dorset captures represent the survival of an indi- 

 genous British race, as in the case of the Norfolk Hesperia armori- 

 camis, Obthr. While Mr. Pickard-Cambridge was a first-rate 

 microlepidopterist, his research work upon Arachnida secured his 

 election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, of which body he must 

 have been nearly the doyen, if not in point of date of election, at least 

 in point of years. He was also a member of the Bournemouth Society 

 of Natural Science of the " eighties." But his great age interfered 

 little with his physical or mental activities, and the family tradition 

 is carried on by his sons, one of whom, Mr. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, 

 is Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. H. R.-B. 



* Cp.- the amusing and characteristic paper " Brockenhurst Kevisited " (' EdtO- 

 mplogist,' xxix, pp. 146-149 . 



