vill BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. 



look at the index, which barely points to the authors whom he had consulted and the 

 subjects which he had investigated. If, with his vast accumulation of facts, he was 

 exceedingly cautious in his generalizations, and looked sometimes with a sort of 

 amused distrust on the popular theories of the hour, it should be regarded rather 

 as a virtue than a failing in these days of hasty inferences from very imperfect data. 

 He not only visited every quarter of the earth, but went through the whole range 

 of history wherever it could bear upon his subject, in quest of any thing that might 

 help him better to understand " The Races of Man and their Geographical Distri- 

 bution, The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Plants, and The Chronological 

 History of Plants." The field was vast ; the laborer did not shrink from the work 

 which it imposed, but engaged in it and carried it on all the more earnestly on that 

 account. The ripest fruits of his labors are here placed before the reader. 



Instead of attempting a sketch of the author's Life, we give below Notices which 

 appeared soon after his death from persons who had seen him under different cir- 

 cumstances and in different relations. It is hoped that the reader will excuse in them 

 a few repetitions. J. H. M. 



[The following Notice, written by Rev. John H. Morison, was published in the "Unitarian Review," 



April, 1S78.] 



Died in Boston, March 17, of pneumonia, Dr. Charles Pickering, a very 

 remarkable man, whose life and uncommon powers of intellectual labor and attain- 

 ment have been employed among us for the advancement of science and the im- 

 provement of our race. 



He was the grandson of Colonel Timothy Pickering, a member of Washington's 

 Cabinet, and one of the most distinguished men of his day. His father, Timothy, 

 son of Colonel Pickering, died before he was thirty years of age. Charles was born 

 in 1805, and with his brother Edward was brought up by their mother, Mrs. Lurena 

 Pickering, a woman of rare excellence, and well fitted to fill the most responsible of 

 all offices in the early training of two such sons. Very early Charles showed the 

 strong bent of his mind towards natural history, and would come home from his 

 boyish excursions loaded with plants, insects, birds, and quadrupeds. He was a 

 member of the class of 1823 at Harvard College, and graduated from the Massa- 

 chusetts Medical School in 1826. He practised medicine several years in Phila- 

 delphia, and while there devoted much of his time to the American Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of that city, being an active member of that as of many other 

 scientific societies. 



In 1838, Dr. Pickering was appointed Naturalist of the United States Exploring 

 Expedition, under the command of Charles Wilkes, U. S. N., and sailed with the 

 expedition on board the "Vincennes." This must have given him grand opportu- 

 nities for extending his favorite studies on a magnificent scale. And these oppor- 



