94 THE LATE PROFESSOR ARCHER. [Jon 



lished by Eeeve & Co., London. It is illustrated with coloured 

 plates by Fitch. This book contains, in small compass, much useful 

 information on the botanical sources of imported fruits, nuts, and 

 oil-seeds ; starches and gums ; textile fibres ; dyeing and tanning 

 materials; building and furniture woods; and some medicinal products. 

 About this time, Mr. Archer had a good deal of correspondence with 

 Sir William Hooker, who was then forming the fine Museum of 

 Economic Botany at Kew. A few years later a collection of the 

 same kind, though smaller in scale, was got together by Mr. Archer, 

 at an astonishingly small expense, in connection with the Eoyal 

 Institution, Liverpool. He also took a particular interest in the 

 Botanic Garden of that town, his liking for exotic being stronger 

 than for British botany. He was fond, however, of making botanical 

 excursions to country districts in Lancashire, Cheshire, and North 

 Wales. He was appointed Professor of Botany in Queen's College, 

 Liverpool, in July 1857; but this College does not appear to have 

 been continued as an educational institution for more than a few 

 years afterwards. 



Professor Archer was appointed Director of the Edinburgh Museum 

 of Science and Art in May 1860. He brought with him from Liver- 

 pool his private collection, which consisted of fully two hundred 

 specimens, chiefly of vegetable products used in the arts. These 

 mainly consisted of the same substances which he had obtained for 

 the collection of imports for the Great Exhibition, most of those of 

 vegetable origin being described in his book. As fully a quarter of 

 a century has elapsed since these specimens were collected and the 

 extent to which they were used recorded, it may be curious to note 

 what changes have taken place in the relative importance of some 

 of them. Madder roots were then, and had been for centuries, a 

 most important article of commerce, as they furnished one of the most 

 largely-used dyes ; but soon after the discovery of the aniline colours 

 by Perkin and others, madder became less used than it had been, and 

 the subsequent discovery of an artificial method of making alizarin 

 — the colouring principle of madder — has reduced the imports of 

 natural madder to comparative insignificance. Indigo, another dye- 

 stuff of great importance, still figures conspicuously among our im- 

 ports ; but its colouring principle has also been recently prepared 

 artificially — that is, from other sources than the indigo plant — by 

 German chemists ; so that, although the artificial product is still too 

 costly to compete with the natural indigo, the cultivation of the 

 plant and the preparation of the dye from it may soon be no longer 

 remunerative. 



Palm-oil, obtained so abundantly from the fruit of the palm Elais 

 Guincensis, and the use of which for the manufacture of soap and 



