Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/443

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Story-Maskelyne
433
Story-Maskelyne

Street, Edinburgh, the offices of the church) and for Glasgow University (in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow University). Of the latter there is a good photogravure. There is a fine drawing by William Strang, A.R.A. A memorial window was unveiled in Rosneath Church on 24 Sept. 1908, and another, by Douglas Strachan, was placed in the Bute Hall, Glasgow University, on 21 Oct. 1909.

On 31 Oct. 1863 Story married Janet Leith, daughter of Captain Philip Maughan, H.E.I.C. Mrs. Story was author of three well-constructed novels, 'Charley Nugent,' 'The Co-heiress,' and 'The St. Aubyns of St Aubyn,' and of 'Kitty Fisher,' a children's story. In 1911 she published deeply interesting 'Early Reminiscences,' Two surviving children, Elma and Helen Constance Herbert, jointly wrote a memoir of their father.

[Memoir of Robert Herbert Story, D.D., LL.D., by his daughters; Mrs. Oliphant, Memoir of Principal Tulloch, 1888, and Autobiography 1899; Twenty-five Years of St. Andrews, by Dr. A. K. H. Boyd, 1896; Life of Dr. Robert Wallace, by Sheriff Campbell Smith; Scotsman, and Glasgow Herald, 14 Jan. 1907; information from Miss Story; personal knowledge.]

T. B.


STORY-MASKELYNE, MERVYN HERBERT NEVIL (1823–1911), mineralogist, born at Basset Down House, near Wroughton, Wiltshire, on 3 Sept. 1823, was eldest son in the famlly of two sons and four daughters of Anthony Mervyn Reeve Story, F.R.S. (1791-1879), by his wife Margaret, only child and ultimate heiress of Nevil Maskelyne [q. v.], astronomer royal. The father acquired through his wife the Maskelyne estates in Wiltshire, and in 1845 adopted the surname of Story-Maskelyne. One of the mineralogist's sisters, Antonia, married Sir Warington Wilkinson Smyth [q. v.].

After spending ten years at Bruton grammar school in Somerset, Story-Maskelyne was admitted to Wadham College, Oxford, as a commoner on 19 Nov. 1840, and graduated B.A. with a second class in mathematics in Easter term 1845. He proceeded M.A. on 7 June 1849. On leaving Oxford he studied for the bar, but he had, almost from boyhood, taken a keen interest in natural science, and his early studies in photography led to a friendship with William Henry Fox Talbot [q. v.] He was persuaded to abandon the law for science in 1847 by Benjamin Brodie the younger [q. v.], and in 1850 was invited to deliver lectures on mineralogy at Oxford. He accepted this invitation on condition that a laboratory should be assigned to him, where he could teach mineralogical analysis and chemistry in general. Chemical manipulation had not been taught previously in the University of Oxford, and great interest was excited by the opportunity of learning what sort of thing chemistry might be. A suite of rooms under the Ashmolean Museum was allotted Story-Maskelyne, and there he lived and worked from 1851 to 1857. His first student was William Thomson [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of York.

Story-Maskelyne was an early advocate of the due recognition of natural science in the Oxford curriculum, and was examiner in the new school of natural science in 1855 and 1856. He was active in the struggle which lasted from 1847 to 1857 over the proposal to erect a museum in Oxford. The foundation stone of the museum was laid in 1855 and it was opened in 1861 (cf. Atlay's Henry Acland: a Memoir, 1903, pp. 197 seq.). Story-Maskelyne became professor of mineralogy in 1856 in succession to Dean William Buckland [q. v.], and was duly allotted as professor a laboratory in the new museum. The chair had been founded by George IV in 1813, but it was very inadequately remunerated till 1877, when it was reconstituted as the Waynflete professorship of mineralogy.

In 1857 Story-Maskelyne was appointed to the newly created post of keeper of the minerals at the British Museum and, although he retained his Oxford professorship, he settled in London. It became his practice to invite the most promising of his Oxford pupils, who included Professor W. J. Lewis, Dr. L. Fletcher, and Sir Henry A. Miers, to work with him at the British Museum. He thus extended the usefulness of both his London and Oxford offices, and trained many distinguished members of the next generation of British mineralogists.

Since 1851 no one at the British Museum had taken any special interest in mineralogy. Story-Maskelyne undertook the re-arrangement of all the minerals under his charge according to the crystallochemical system of Rose. He also maintained and developed the collections so that they became the largest and best arranged series of minerals and meteorites in existence. During his tenure of the keepership no fewer than 43,000 specimens were added to the collection. He published a catalogue of