282 Royal Irish Academy. 



mention only those of his supporters not resident in Ireland. "When 

 in 1890 the greater portion of this Library was, by an agreement, 

 transferred to the Committee of Council on Education to form the 

 E'ational Library for Ireland, Archer became the Principal Librarian, 

 in which position he remained until, under the superannuation 

 clause, he retired in 1895. At the time of his retirement Archer 

 was in a precarious state of health, from which condition he never 

 quite recovered; he died on the 14th of August, 1897. 



Of his work as Librarian of our National Library this is not the 

 place to speak ; but some brief account of his scientific work, by which 

 his name will be known to all future workers, is called for. 



His first important work was a catalogue of the Desmids found 

 near Dublin, which was communicated to the Dublin University 

 Zoological and Botanical Association in January, 1857, and which was 

 the result of investigations carried on during 1854-56. Supplements 

 to this were published in 1858, and then, for the first time, several 

 new species were described and figured by him. These memoirs 

 brought Archer into correspondence with M. de Brebisson, of Falaise, 

 and led to his being intrusted by Andrew Pritchard with the revision 

 of the group of Desmids for his "History of Infusoria," published in 

 1861. From this time Archer's contributions to our knowledge of the 

 fresh-water Chlorophycese were numerous. All were based on personal 

 observation, carried on over considerable periods of time. Archer was 

 never in a hurry to describe an apparently new form ; on the contrary, 

 he often exhibited interesting species at the meetings of the Micro- 

 scopical Club without describing them, resting in the hope of getting 

 more details. One result of this reticence has been that all such not 

 published are now lost to science ; for Archer, however good as a 

 collector and observer, did not properly preserve his specimens, and 

 has left no named series behind him. 



It was almost impossible to investigate the minute forms of Algae 

 without constantly encountering the minute forms of animal life. In 

 1863 he discovered Stephanosphcera pluvialis Cohn, on Bray Head, and 

 made the amoeba-form stage of this Alga a special study. Por this 

 purpose he plunged into the whole subject of amoeboid bodies, with 

 the result that his name will be for ever associated with the life-history 

 of the fresh- water Phizopods and Heliozoa. The first of a remarkable 

 series of contributions to our knowledge of these forms began in 1869, 



