Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

author

Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

1828–1917

Best known as a pioneering British arachnologist, he spent decades describing spiders and helped shape the scientific study of the group in the late 19th century. He was also an Anglican clergyman, bringing careful observation and a patient naturalist’s eye to both country life and science.

1 Audiobook

Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders

Supplement to Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders

by John Traherne Moggridge, Octavius Pickard-Cambridge

About the author

Born in 1828 and dying in 1917, he was an English clergyman and zoologist whose name is especially linked with arachnology, the study of spiders. He described a remarkable number of species and became one of the key Victorian specialists in the field.

Alongside his church career, he built a lasting reputation through close, methodical work on spiders from Britain and from abroad. His publications and species descriptions made him an important figure for later zoologists, and his name still appears often in scientific literature.

He is remembered as one of those 19th-century naturalists who combined parish life with serious scientific research. That mix of everyday discipline, curiosity, and careful record-keeping helped leave a durable mark on zoology.