GENERAL PKOGRESS AT THE MUSEUM. 15 



The process of transferring the collections from the old 

 building to the new, and of re-arranging the galleries in the 

 old building thus vacated has been greatly delayed, first by 

 the dispute in the building trade in the early months of 1914, 

 and secondly by the outbreak of war. 



The war has affected the Museum in many Avays. Over 

 60 members of the staff at Bloomsbury, and over 30 of those 

 at the Natural History Museum, have taken service in the 

 naval or military forces of the Crown. Others have been 

 attached to the War Office and the Foreign Office for special 

 duty, while many of those who could not be accepted or 

 granted leave for active service have joined various volun- 

 tary organisations for military, protective, or hospital work. 

 Special precautions have been taken to protect the collections 

 in the event of raids by hostile aircraft. At an early stage in 

 the war a large number of the more portable objects of special 

 value were removed to positions of greater security in safes or 

 in strong rooms, their places in the exhibition galleries being 

 taken by objects of lesser value or by facsimiles. Additional 

 measures, including the protection of certain objects which 

 cannot safely be removed, have been taken since the close of 

 the year to which this report relates. 



The war has further affected the Museum by the reduction 

 of the number of visitors, which involves a reduction in the 

 receipts from the sale of publications, and by the lessening of 

 correspondence, as well as visits, from foreign scholars. On 

 the other hand the Museum has been much utilised by Belgian 

 and French refugees, for whose benefit special lectures have 

 been arranged by the official Guides. 



Progress with official publications will be seriously delayed, 

 both by the absence of members of the staff on military duty 

 and by the inevitable curtailment of expenditure on such 

 objects. In particular, the consideration of a scheme for a 

 re-issue of the General Catalogue of Printed Books will have 

 to be indefinitely postponed. 



Outside the Museum, excavations were continued at Jerablus 

 during the spring and early summer, with satisfactory results. 

 A preliminary volume, giving an account of the site and 

 reproductions of the principal monuments and inscriptions 

 hitherto discovered, has been published. The continuance of 

 this work is mainly due to the liberality of an anonymous 

 benefactor, who has already contributed 5,000L towards it, and 

 has recently conveyed a further sum of 10,000^. to trustees to 

 provide for its further progress. Excavations are now neces- 

 sarily in abeyance, but there is no reason to suppose that the 

 site or the antiquities discovered there have suffered since the 

 outbreak of war. The disposition of the natives has always 

 been friendly towards the British excavators, and they appear 

 to have continued to safeguard the site. 



