388 DAVID HUMPHREYS STORER. 



DAVID HUMPHREYS STORER. 



David Humphreys Storer was born in Portland, Me., March 26, 

 1804, and died in Boston, September 10, 1891. His father was Chief 

 Justice of the Court of Common Pleas at Portland, and an elder brother 

 became Chief Justice of the Supreme Bench of Ohio. Through his 

 father he was descended from Governor Langdon of New Hampshire, 

 one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and through 

 his mother from Governor Dudley of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 

 Dr. Storer graduated at Bowdoin College in 1822, studied medicine 

 in Boston under Dr. John C. Warren, and took his degree at the Har- 

 vard Medical School in 1825. He at once entered upon the practice 

 of his profession in Boston, and after the hard struggle to which even 

 talent is exposed in a strange city he gained position as one of the 

 leading practitioners of Boston. In 1837, with Dr. Jacob Bigelow 

 and others, he established the Tremont Street Medical School, a pri- 

 vate school " which, as the germ of the present curriculum of Harvard, 

 has borne much valuable fruit," but afterwards, in 1854, took the 

 Chair of Obstetrics and Medical Jurisprudence in the Harvard Medical 

 School, where he became Dean, in which capacity he served for many 

 years. 



His great success in the medical field has been properly recorded by 

 his colleagues, and need not be further noticed here, since it was for 

 his work in another department that he was chosen to the Zoological 

 Section of the Academy, November 8, 1837. 



Like most naturalists who have distinguished themselves in later 

 life, his interest in natural history began at an early period. Entering 

 college when not yet fourteen years of age, he came under the influ- 

 ence of Prof. A. S. Packard, for whom he retained through life a 

 warm affection and admiration. At first mineralogy particularly in- 

 terested him, and he greatly enjoyed the field excursions to mineral 

 localities made with Professor Packard ; the collections then made 

 were afterwards given to one of his sons, and put to good service in 

 teaching the first classes in the Institute of Technology. 



Yet his taste for natural history at that early period was by no 

 means confined to minerals ; entomology engaged much of his atten- 

 tion, and he gave popular lectures on insects in the days when lyceum 

 lectures were first instituted ; he was also devoted to ornithology, and 

 made at one time a large collection of birds' eggs ; indeed, it was 

 through his example and interest that his brother in law, our late 

 associate, Dr. T. M. Brewer, became a student in this field. His taste 



