Ii4 IN MEMORIAM—FRANCIS ARCHER. 
Mr, Francis Archer, or Frank Archer as he was more familiarly 
known to his friends, received his education as a boy first with the 
Rev. Mr. Payne, Faulkner Street, Liverpool, and then at the Liver- 
pool Collegiate Institution, Shaw Street. Rising from the Middle 
School to the Upper, in which he became second boy, he entered 
Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a Scholar of Trinity, and 
in 1862 took his degree with honours, being a wrangler. Entering 
the office of Messrs. Bateson & Robinson, a distinguished firm of 
Liverpool solicitors, he was admitted in 1865, and became their 
managing clerk. Being offered a partnership in the firm, which 
became Lowndes, Thornely & Archer, and afterwards Thornely and 
Archer, he practised as a solicitor in Liverpool with success for a 
good many years, but, becoming attracted by journalism and politics, 
he left the law and became for a time sub-editor of the ‘ Liverpool 
Daily Post,’ a newspaper distinguished then, as now, for the literary 
ability with which it is conducted. 
From what Mr. Archer ae to me, he found the newspaper life 
too exacting and absorbing, but, whatever may have been the reason, 
he gave it up and re-entered the practice of the law. In partnership 
with the late Mr. Isham Gill, under the name of Gill & Archer, and 
later Gill, Archer & Maples, he was concerned professionally with 
many important railway, water, and other undertakings in Liverpool 
and Cheshire. The sub-aqueous tunnel under the Mersey, called 
the Mersey Railway, was the most important of them, and marked 
an era in railway engineering. In 1890-91 he was President of the 
Liverpool Law Society. ; 
Mr. Archer was a many-sided man of great vigour, but, withal, 
tender and not without sentiment. Professionally, he was esteemed 
as an able man of sound sense—straightforward and upright in all 
his ways. He was a good musician and singer, knew Tennyson off 
by heart, and would quote him effectively on almost any subject of 
human interest. Charles Darwin he held in the greatest reverence 
from the very first appearance of the ‘Origin of Species,’ which 
Mr. Archer read when at Cambridge. He has often told me the 
storm it aroused among the Dons, and said that Charles Kingsley 
was the only man besides himself who at all supported the new views 
of nature 
Saris the whole course of his life Mr. Archer was interested 
in natural science. It was not a mere hobby, or a collector's 
instinct—though of the latter he was not deficient. Science was 4 
living reality to him, and, acting on a cultured mind, gave form to 
his thoughts. The writer,has never known anyone else of whom 
this could be said with such truth and force. It gave him broad views 
Naturalist, 
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