The Committee cannot help feeling gratified that 

 the constant attention they have given to the require- 

 ments of the institution, the many improvements they 

 have felt called upon to make, and the great care and 

 skill with which the Curator and Superintendent have 

 carried out their duties, have thus been responded to 

 by all classes of the community, and by numerous 

 strangers from other places. 



Partly in consequence of the projected visit of the 

 Museums Association, the Committee and staff were 

 led to make a great effort to classify and arrange, largely 

 in new and handsome cases, the valuable Natural 

 History collections. This involved nothing less than 

 their complete reorganisation. But under pressure, 

 what would ordinarily have taken a long period to 

 accomplish was done in a comparatively short time. A 

 special effort was also made to obtain from other 

 municipalities, and from private sources, suitable paint- 

 ings to form a loan collection illustrative of the British 

 School, and to display to the best advantage the 

 antiquities and local treasures for which the Museum 

 Rooms of the Art Gallery have become famous. 



The result of all this, as far as the effect upon our 

 visitors is concerned, is expressed in the following 

 extract from the official organ of the Museums Associa- 

 tion : " It is doubtful if any museum in the kingdom has 

 risen to the requirements of later aspirations, by placing 

 before the public in its own museum the beauties of 

 nature, the lessons which natural history can teach, and 

 the simple facts which pervade the order of the animal 

 kingdom, with greater clearness and precision than has 

 been done in the Bristol Museum of Natural History. 

 It is a Municipal Museum in a very full sense, 

 attractive and instructive in a high degree. In Art, 



