BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE 
OF 
DAVID HUMPHREYS STORER. 
BY 
SAMUEL H. SCUDDER. 
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXVII.] 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 DAVID HUMPHREYS STORER. 
389 
for collecting extended even to coins. At one time he was in league 
with all the toll gatherers on the Boston bridges, and they kept for 
him any odd pieces of money which fell into their hands. This pas- 
sion for numismatics, it may be added, appears to have been handed 
down to his descendants, one son being still deeply interested in the 
subject, and a grandson the Curator of the Coins belonging to Harvard 
University. The coin-collecting mingled curiously with his Natural 
History interests, and we are told that he persuaded the keepers of 
several sailor’s boarding-houses to secure for him any coins, shells, 
or fishes which their guests might have obtained in foreign parts. 
It was natural that he should join the Boston Society of Natural His- 
tory, which he did immediately after its foundation in 1830, so that he has 
always been enrolled as one of the “ original members,” though he was 
not strictly such ; his activity is attested to by his being chosen a few 
months later Recording Secretary, a post he held for nearly six years. 
At this time he appears to have been giving special attention to Mol- 
lusca, and as a number of other gentlemen at the same period in our 
city were also forming collections, it was doubtless from the enthu- 
siasm born of this common interest that he ventured to issue the pros- 
pectus of a contemplated translation of Kiener’s “ Iconographie,” then 
in course of publication in Paris ; but for lack of support only one part 
of the translation ever appeared, an octavo of about a hundred and 
fifty pages, issued in 1837. His own collection, kept until his death, 
has recently been given to Bowdoin College. 
It is apparent, then, that in his early manhood he had made a some- 
what thorough acquaintance with more than one department of natural 
history, and this makes it natural that his name was mentioned (and, 
if he had permitted, would have been urged) by his friends for the 
post of Naturalist to the government exploring expedition under Cap- 
tain Wilkes. It explains, too, his success in a field he had then hardly 
cultivated ; for the turning point in his career as a naturalist came 
when, in 1837, as the result of a memorial of the Natural History So- 
ciety to the General Court, the legislature authorized a Natural His- 
tory Survey of the Commonwealth, and the Governor appointed Dr. 
Storer one of the Commissioners to prosecute it. The several commis- 
sioners divided the work between them, and as Dr. A. A. Gould, an 
older and more experienced malacologist, was naturally assigned the 
Mollusca, Dr. Storer undertook the description of the fishes and rep- 
tiles of the State. He had previously paid some attention to one of 
these groups, the fishes, as is shown by the justly severe criticism of 
Smith’s list of our species which he published the year before in the 390 
DAVID HUMPHREYS STORER. 
“ Boston Journal of Natural History ”; but it is probable that his spe- 
cial acquaintance with this part of our fauna only began at about that 
time, when he was appointed one of the Curators of the Society’s mu- 
seum. Yet three years thereafter he published his report upon both 
the groups, an octavo volume of two hundred and fifty-three pages. 
Considering that these were just the years in which lie was one of the 
chief supports of the infant Tremont Street Medical School, which 
gave systematic instruction throughout the year (the Harvard Medi- 
cal School only for the four winter months), that he had the care and 
toil of an engrossing profession, and that scarcely the nucleus of a col- 
lection existed when he began his work, the result is certainly surpris- 
ing. Through all the spring, summer, and autumn months, from five 
o’clock in the morning until the breakfast hour, he might be found en- 
gaged at the Society’s museum over his specimens, snatching the early 
hours out of a busy day ; every day, too, found him in the markets 
and by the wharves, interesting the fishermen in his eager search for 
strange forms of fish ; this contagious enthusiasm was one of the chief 
sources of his success. 
It was a token of his interest in and appreciation of this work that 
Agassiz, when he first landed on our shores, went directly to Dr. 
Storer from the house of Mr. Lowell, through whose invitation he had 
come to America. Dr. Storer’s house was for years the daily resort 
of Agassiz and his Swiss associates, and with them his children grew 
up on the most familiar terms. 
This work upon our Massachusetts fishes and reptiles was thoroughly 
done, equal to the best work of the time, and, like several other vol- 
umes of the remarkable series published under the auspices of the 
State, will ever remain a work of special value. That it was not com- 
plete no one knew better than the author, and this doubtless it was 
which led him to continue his investigations with the purpose of revis- 
ing, enlarging, and perfecting it. To this he devoted all the forced 
leisure of more than twenty-five years, publishing the work by instal- 
ments in the Memoirs of the American Academy, with excellent illus- 
trations, between 1855 and 1867; afterwards issuing it separately, 
under the title of “ A History of the Fishes of Massachusetts,” as a 
quarto volume of two hundred and eighty-seven pages and thirty-seven 
plates. 
In this work he redescribed, and with greater fulness, all the species 
from our waters, and elucidated their natural history with the greatest 
care, paying particular attention also to the economic side. His style 
is lucid and simple, his descriptions perfectly clear and well ordered, 391 
the synonymy carefully worked out. There is as yet no complete 
work of the kind for any part of the United States which surpasses it, 
and it will ever remain a laud-mark in the ichthyological literature of 
the country ; for it is a storehouse of facts, and it was the successful 
collecting and simple presentation of facts which made the volumes 
of several of the earlier commissioners — Harris, Gould, Storer, and 
Emerson — models of what natural history work of permanent value 
should be. 
Ur. Storer’s other considerable publication, the “ Synopsis of the 
Fishes of North America,” a quarto volume of nearly three hundred 
pages, published in 1846, is of less value, because distinctly a work of 
compilation, and he was not so skilled in the niceties of classification 
as in the descriptions of the different specific forms and the study of 
.their histories; but it was the first considerable attempt to collate 
existing material, and as such it had its importance and convenience. 
A man full of enthusiasm and sympathy, fearless, impulsive and 
generous, high-minded, high-spirited, and with a noble scorn of any- 
thing mean, deceitful, or unjust, Dr. Storer endeared himself alike to 
pupils and associates. No one who has known him will forget the 
open, brilliant expression of his mobile countenance, his piercing, 
friendly eye, the quick, impulsive speech, full of force and geniality ; 
he was a friend worth making a sacrifice for, and not to be forgotten. 
In 1829, he married Abigail Jane Brewer, sister of the ornithologist, 
the late Dr. T. M. Brewer, by whom he had three sons and two 
daughters. His wife died in 1885. His children survive him; two 
of his sons have distinguished themselves in science, and have been 
elected to membership in this Academy. Dr. Storer was the recipient 
of many honors in his medical profession, a member of many learned 
societies, and received from his Alma Mater the degree of Doctor of 
Laws in 1876. At the time of his death he was the oldest physician 
in Boston.