PICKEHLXC.
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PICKERING
sition might be evident, a double coffin,
and his grave to be watched for several
weeks for fear of bodysnatchcrs. lie
died in Pliihulcl|ihia on December 15,
1837.
He Avas married in 1800, though little can be gleaned concerning his wife save that she was a Miss Enilen, " higlily gifted and talented," and had four children, also that Physick was "a faith- ful domestic character,"' allowing his daughters to entertain as much as they liked and only allowing himself recreation towards the end of liis life when lie loved to go with them to his summer house in Cecil County, Maryland.
He was professor of surgery, Pennsyl- vania University, 1805-19; professor of anatomy, 1819-31; president of Philadel- phia Medical Society, 1824; emeritus pro- fessor of anatomy and surgery, Pennsyl- vania University, 1831-37; member of the Academy of Medicine of P>ance, 1825; honorary fellow, Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, London, lS5(j.
D. W.
There is a portrait in the Collection of
the Surg. -gen. Lib., Washington.
Autobiograijhy, S. D. Gross.
Review of Dr. Homer's necrologic notice
of Dr. P. S. Physick, Phila.. 1838.
Notice of Dr. P. S. Physick, W. E. Horner,
Phila., 1838.
Amer. Jour. Med. Sc, (J. Randol])h,) Phila.,
1839.
Maryland Med. and .Surg. .Jour.. (.S. Collins,)
Baltimore, 1840.
Pickering, Charles (1805-1878).
Charles Pickering, known to the scien- tific world as an anthropologist and botanist, was of good New England stock, being a grandson of Col. Timothy Picker- ing, a member of Washington's military family and of his first cabinet. He was born on Starucca Creek, Upper Susque- hanna, Pennsylvania, on a grant of land owned by his grandfather. His father, Timothy Pickering, died when 30, leaving Charles and his brother Edward to the care of their mother.
He left Harvard before graduation, but took his M. D. there in 1826. In his earlier vears he used to make botanical
expeditions with one William Oakes, and
when he settled in Philadelphia in 1829,
he had a strong bent towards natural
science, very soon being appointed one of
the curators at the Academy of Natural
Sciences, during this time i)ul)Iishing a
l)rief essay on "The Geographical Distri-
bution and Leading Characters of the
United States Flora." When the United
States Exploring Expedition was organ-
ized in the autumn of 1838 to sail for the
South Seas, Pickering was elected as the
principal zoologist, and the fame of that
expedition rests chiefly on the work he
then did with Prof. Dana. Although
Pickering retained the ichthyology, he
went keenly into the geograpliical distri-
bution of animals and plants; to the
latter especially as affected by the opera-
tions and movements of the races of man.
A year after the expedition, and at his
own expense, he visited Egypt, Arabia,
Eastern Africa and Western and Northern
India, publishing in 1848 his volume,
" The Races of Men and Their Geograph-
ical Distribution" (vol. ix, Wilkes'
"Exploring Expedition Report"). In
the fifteenth volume appeared his " Geo-
graphical Distribution of Animals and
Plants." He had no better luck than
man\' a scientist, for, in the course of
printing, Congress appropriations stop-
ped and the publication of further Re-
ports was abandoned. But under privi-
lege, he brought out in 1854 a small
edition of the first part of his essay and in
1876 a more bulky one "On Plants and
Animals in Their Wild State." These
writings and some contributions to scien-
tific journals, notably to the "Smithsonian
Contributions to Knowledge," constituted
his no mean help to the study of natural
science, but he had been long and lovingly
working on a book yet unfinished when he
died, a book edited afterwards by his
wife, Sarah S. Pickering, and appearing in
1879 entitled, "Chronological History of
Plants, or Man's Record of His Own
Existence."
Prof. Harshberger, whose biography of him I have used, says he was sin- gularly retiring and reticeiat, dry in
