16 ACCOUNTS, ETC., OF THE BEITISH MUSEUM. 



Reports on the accessions to the several Departments are 

 appended, in which all the noteworthy objects acquired during 

 the year are mentioned. No single acquisition has been made 

 of equal importance to the Huth Bequest of the previous year, 

 or the royal collection of music deposited by His Majesty the 

 King. But all Departments show steady progress in the addi- 

 tion to the national collections of objects of reaJ importance 

 and interest. 



The main resources of the Department of Printed Books 

 are necessarily devoted to the acquisition of new books in all 

 languages and in all branches of learning. The continual 

 increase in the output of printed literature throughout the 

 world makes it increasingly difficult to maintain the ideal 

 wdiich the Department sets before itself, of possessing all the 

 books which any serious student is likely to want. A special 

 form of this difficulty arises from the constant appearance of 

 new periodicals purporting to possess scientific value. Apart 

 from these current needs, the principal efforts of the Depart- 

 ment are directed towards the development of the collection of 

 Incunabula, the catalogue of which is now in progress. Several 

 acquisitions of this class, and of English works printed before 

 1640, are included in the lists given below. 



In the Department of Manuscripts, the principal accession 

 has been a group of 36 letters of Erasmus. The Dering roll of 

 arms is a heraldic document of considerable importance ; and 

 the collection of historical letters gains by the purchase of 

 18 more volumes of the Liverpool Papers. 



The acquisitions of the Department of Oriental Printed 

 Books and Manuscripts for the most part interest only special- 

 ists ; but the illuminated MS. of the Masnavi i Manavi of 

 Jalal ul-Din Riimi, written in a.d. 1295, and presented by 

 Mr. H. Van den Bergh, is also of great artistic interest. A 

 curious acquisition is that of a collection of pieces of bone, 

 inscribed with extremely archaic characters, and used for 

 purposes of divination. 



Two very important sales of artistic collections took place 

 in the course of the year, and the Department of Prints and 

 Drawings was enabled by the generosity of some of its many 

 friends to profit by the opportunity. At the Taylor sale 

 several exceedingly rare prints belonging to Turner's "Liber 

 Studiorum" and the "sequels" to it were secured with 

 the help of Mr. Henry Oppenheimer and Mr. W. G. Rawlinson ; 

 while a selection from the wealth of Mr. J. P. Heseltine's 

 collection of drawings was obtained through the liberality of 

 Mr. Heseltine himself, Mr. Otto Beit, Mr. Henry Van den 

 Bergh, and Mr. Leopold Hirsch. Other acquisitions include a 

 hitherto unknown first state of Diirer's Melancolia ; a rare set 

 of the Four Evangelists of the Master E. S. ; and Nicholas 

 Hilliard's design for the Irish Great Seal of Queen Elizabeth. 

 Recent art is represented by large collections of the work of 



