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Professor Thomas Croxen Archer. By J. D. Marwick, 
LL.D. 
Thomas Croxen Archer, Director of the Edinburgh Museum of 
Science and Art, was born in Northamptonshire in 1817, and was 
educated in London as a surgeon. When about twenty-five years 
of age, however, he received an appointment in the Import Depart- 
ment of the Customs at Liverpool, and in that service he remained, 
receiving successive promotions, till 1856. Having a natural taste 
for botany, which he had zealously cultivated as a branch of his 
medical studies, Mr Archer took a keen scientific interest in all the 
vegetable imports of Liverpool, and when the authorities of that 
city were invited by the promoters of the Great Exhibition of 1851 
to contribute to its success, and were puzzled to know how best to 
do so, Mr Archer proposed a scheme which met with universal 
acceptance. His suggestion was that Liverpool should be repre- 
sented by a complete and systematically arranged collection of 
specimens of all the mineral, animal, and vegetable importations 
into the Mersey, and this scheme was admirably carried into effect 
under his own direction. He was subsequently invited to write one 
of the official reports on the Exhibition. Th,e services rendered by 
him in connection with this collection, and also as agent in Liver- 
pool for the Exhibition, were recognised by a medal ; and in the 
following year he was appointed agent in Liverpool for the Crystal 
Palace Company, who marked their sense of the value of his work 
for it during 1852-3 by conferring three medals upon him. In the 
latter of these years Mr Archer contributed a volume on “ Economic 
Botany” to a series of popular works on Natural History published 
by Lowell, Reeve, & Co., of London. About this time Sir 
William Hooker was forming the great museum of Economic Botany 
at Kew, and had much correspondence on the subject with Mr 
Archer, who afterwards set himself, with characteristic energy, to 
make a somewhat similar, though smaller, collection for the Royal 
Institution at Liverpool. His interest in botany also attracted him 
to the Botanic Gardens of the city, in which he took an active 
concern, and led to many excursions in the neighbouring counties, 
