14 ACCOUNTS, ETC., OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 



VIII. General Progress at the Museum, Bloomsbury. 



The first complete year of war naturally shows a reduction in 

 the number of visitors to the Museum as compared with the 

 exceptionally high figures of 1913 and the first seven months of 

 1914. The absence of Continental and American visitors and of 

 holiday tourists in general was bound to make itself evident in these 

 returns. On the other hand, the use of the Museum by our own 

 people has been more than fully maintained. The total number of 

 visits for the year 1915 was 733,091 (680,000 on week-days and 

 53,091 on Sundays), which is a figure slightly in advance of the 

 total for 1911, and slightly below those for 1910 and 1912, all of 

 which were years in which London enjoyed a normal influx of 

 foreign visitors and holiday tourists. 



A marked feature in the use of the Museum was the number of 

 soldiers who visited the galleries, including many from the Overseas 

 Dominions. 



The visits of students to particular departments showed more 

 reduction than the visits of the general public to the exhibition 

 galleries. The visitors to the Reading Room numbered 178,410 as 

 compared with 224,560, to the Newspaper Room 12,650 as 

 compared with 16,704, to the other departments 24,984 as compared 

 with 31,949. After deducting these figures from the general totals, 

 it will be found that the visits to the public exhibition galleries were 

 greatly in excess of those in any of the seven years preceding 1913. 



The lectures of the Official Guides were well attended through- 

 out the year. Some special lectures were given to Belgian 

 refugees. 



In continuation of the measures taken in the first months of the 

 war, a considerable number of the more valuable objects in the 

 collections were removed to places of greater safety. Among these 

 were the statues from the pediments of the Parthenon and certain 

 other sculptures of special value ; while the metopes and frieze of 

 the Parthenon, and the greater part of the Assyrian bas-reliefs, have 

 received special protection m situ. In some cases casts and 

 reproductions were substituted for originals in the public galleries. 



The transference of the collections to King Edward the Seventh's 

 Galleries, and the re-arrangement of the rooms in the older parts of 

 the Museum, have been very greatly delayed by the necessity for 

 economies in labour and the difficulty of obtaining materials. 

 Nevertheless some progress has been made in the re-arrangement of 

 the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities, as described 

 below. 



A corridor connecting the north-east staircase of the old building 

 (near the King's Library) with the Ground Floor Gallery of the 

 new building has been completed, and will be available when the 

 latter Gallery is opened to the public. 



The only publications have been works which were in hand 

 before the outbreak of war, and which it was more economical to 

 complete and issue than to suspend. 



