408 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



necessarily left out regions of the highest interest to the an- 

 thropological investigator, those occupied in early times by the 

 race to which we belong, and by the peoples with which the 

 Aryan race has been most in contact. Desirous to extend his 

 personal observations as far as possible, Dr. Pickering, a year 

 after the return of the expedition, and at his own charges, 

 crossed the Atlantic, visited Egypt, Arabia, the eastern part 

 of Africa, and western and northern India. Then, in 1848, 

 he published his volume on " The Races of Man, and their 

 Geographical Distribution," being the ninth volume of the 

 " Reports of the Wilkes' Exploring Expedition." Some time 

 afterward, he prepared, for the fifteenth volume of this series, 

 an extensive work on the " Geographical Distribution of Ani- 

 mals and Plants." But, in the course of the printing, the ap- 

 propriations by Congress intermitted or ceased, and the pub- 

 lication of the results of the celebrated expedition was sus- 

 pended. Publication it could hardly be called : for Congress 

 printed only one hundred copies, in a sumptuous form, for 

 presentation to states and foreign courts ; and then the sev- 

 eral authors were allowed to use the types and copperplates 

 for printing as many copies as they required, and could pay 

 for. Under this privilege, Dr. Pickering brought out in 1854 

 a small edition of the first part of his essay, — perhaps the 

 most important part, — and in 1876 a more bulky portion, 

 "On Plants and Animals in their Wild State," which is 

 largely a transcript of the note-book memoranda as jotted 

 down at the time of observation or collection. 



These are all his publications, excepting some short com- 

 munications to scientific journals and the proceedings of 

 learned societies to which he belonged. But he is known to 

 have been long and laboriously engaged upon a work for 

 which, under his exhaustive treatment, a lifetime seems hardly 

 sufficient ; a digest, in fact, of all that is known of all the 

 animals and plants with which civilized man has had to do 

 from the earliest period traceable by records. When Dr. 

 Pickering died, he w r as carrying this work through the press 

 at his own individual expense, had already in type five or six 

 hundred quarto pages, and it is understood that the remainder, 



