1885.] THE LATE PROFESSOR ARCHER. 93 



are by all allowed to be very much smaller than one at Somna in 

 Lombardy. This is greatly reverenced by the inhabitants of the 

 district, who have a tradition that it was planted in the year of r)ur 

 Saviour's birth. Even Napoleon is said to liave treated it with 

 some deference, and to liave deviated from a direct line, when laying 

 down the plan for the great road across the Simplon, in order to 

 avoid injuring it. Millin states that in 1794 the trunk was r^^ least 

 16 feet in circumference. But according to the Abbi' lieluze's 

 measurements, the girth in 1832 was 20 feet, and Signor Manetti 

 states that at that time it was 23 feet in circumference at the 

 height of a foot from the ground. Now well-authenticated observa- 

 tions proved that the Cypress scarcely attains the circumference of 14 

 or 15 feet in 400 years, and that after that it increases very slowly, 

 so that Millin's measurement may be taken as considerably below 

 the truth. Perhaps then some credit may be placed in the popular 

 tradition ; indeed. Abbe Beleze informs us, on tlie authority of his 

 brother, that there is an ancient chronicle extant at Milan, which 

 proves this tree to have been in existence in the time of Julius 

 Caesar ! 



THE LATE T. C. ARCHER, DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM 

 OF SCIENCE AND ART, EDINBURGH} 



BY A. GALLETLY. 



THOMAS CEOXEN AECHER was born in Northamptonshire 

 in the year 1817, and was educated in London as a surgeon, 

 but does not appear to have practised for more than a few years. 

 He received an appointment in the Import Department of the 

 Customs, at Liverpool, in 1841, and remained in the service for 

 nineteen years. Having a natural taste for botany, he took a 

 special interest in the vegetable products which w'ere brought to 

 that port from all parts of the world. He formed an extensive 

 collection of Liverpool imports for the Great Exhibition of 1851, 

 and it was this which first brought him into public notice. While 

 other public-spirited men at Liverpool were at a loss to know what 

 to send to the Exhibition, Mr. Archer had the shrewdness to see 

 that nothing would show the greatness of the town better than a 

 correctly-named series of specimens of the raw products — mineral, 

 vegetable, and animal — which, at one season or another, were float- 

 ing in the famous docks on the side of the Mersey. 



In 1853, Mr. Archer wrote a small volume on Economic Botany 

 for the well-known series of popular works on Natural History, pub- 



' Forming part of an obituary notice read to the Botanical Society of Edinburgh. 



