2 Francis Humphreys Storer [March, 



the outcome was attributed to this or that cause, but hardly ever 

 to the chemical factors operating in the soil. 



Impressed with the idea of the need of placing agriculture on a 

 plane with the other sciences, Storer went abroad in 1855 to study 

 the European methods of applying chemistry to the study and prac- 

 tice of agriculture. At Tharand he is found working in the labora- 

 tory of the Royal Academy of Agriculture, studying methods under 

 the famous Julius A. Stöckhardt. At Heidelberg he listened to the 

 lectures of the great Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, and last, but not least, 

 we hear of him making observations in Paris under the master 

 Boussingault. 



Not finding an appropriate opportunity for applying his newly- 

 gained knowledge — the application of chemistry to the Interpretation 

 of biological processes — Storer, on his return to the United States in 

 1857, while the " panic of 1857" was at its height, established him- 

 self as a Consulting and analytical chemist in Boston. In 1865, 

 however, he accepted a position as chemist with the Boston Gas 

 Light Company, and also became Professor of General and Indus- 

 trial Chemistry at the newly-created Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology. This was Professor Storer's first real experience as an 

 independent teacher and here he taught chemistry, as he often re- 

 marked later, " better than ever before in America." 



Prof. William B. Rogers, the Founder of the Massachusetts In- 

 stitute of Technology, was strongly of opinion that the right way to 

 teach the sciences — chemistry, physics, and biology — was the labora- 

 tory way, without rejecting entirely the lecture method, in which 

 he was himself a master. He insisted wlien he started scientific 

 Instruction in the Institute of Technology, that every Student should 

 have abundant opportunity to make experiments himself in properly 

 equipped laboratories. The first man he selected to be Professor 

 of Chemistry in the new Institute was Storer, with whose thorough 

 laboratory training in chemistry, and experience as a practicing 

 chemist, Professor Rogers was familiär. Professor Rogers had 

 also known about some chemical researches Storer and Charles W. 

 Eliot had made together in the early '60s, especially with one pub- 

 lished as a memoir in the series of the American Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences on "The impurities of commercial zinc." Professor 



