» BRITISH MUSEUM. 



Selsey beach, a tore of twisted gold found in Sligo in 1850 and now 

 presented by the Misses Phibbs ; and a quantity of flint implements of 

 diverse kinds, presented by various friends of the Museum. 



The principal accession to the Department of Ceramics and Ethno- 

 graphy was the very remarkable group of fifteen Chinese silver vessels 

 of the T'ang period (x\.D. 618-906), which the Museum was enabled to 

 purchase by the assistance of a number of generous friends. No such 

 hoard has ever previously been discovered, and these vessels testify 

 to the skill and taste of the Chinese silversmiths who produced them. A 

 fine Persian dish, of the Zendjian type, was presented by the National 

 Art- Collections Fund, and a curious glass figure, declared by the 

 highest authority on cetaceans to be a bottle-nosed whale rather than a 

 dolphin, was acquired by purchase. In the Ethnographical section, 

 in addition to the annual gift of carefully selected objects by the 

 Christy Trustees, the Department received a series of oil paintings of 

 Tasmanian and Australian aborigines, made about 1838, from Mr. 

 H. F. McClintock ; a large and finely carved model of a Maori canoe 

 from Lord Stanley of Alderley ; a number of Eskimo specimens col- 

 lected in 1821-25 by Capt. (afterwards Admiral Sir) W. E. Parry, with a 

 carved wooden feather-box and other objects from Australasia, from 

 Sir Sidney Parry, K.B.E. ; and many other gifts from many bene- 

 factors. 



The Department of Coins and Medals was also fortunate in its 

 friends, receiving a great collection of Cretan coins by bequest from 

 Mr. R. B. Seager ; the second known example (the other being already 

 in the Museum) of a decadrachm commemorating the camj^aign of 

 Alexander the Great against the Indian king Porus, in the acquisition 

 of which help was received from Mr. S. L. Courtauld, Mr. A. H. 

 Lloyd, and Mr. W. H. Woodward ; a series of nearly 900 patterns and 

 proofs of the copper coinage of England, presented by Miss Ruth 

 Weightman in memory of her father, Surgeon-General Weightman, 

 who formed the collection ; two silver plaques, with portraits of Thomas 

 and Margaret Cary, presented by Miss Helen Farquhar ; one of two 

 specimens of the Maria Theresa dollar in gold, struck for and presented 

 by Mr. S. Avazey, and a series of 21 silver coins of the Mongol Khans 

 of Crimea, presented by the Marquis de Baye. The principal purchases 

 were eight rare silver coins from the Evans collection, and a rare gold 

 octodrachm of Ptolemy III. 



The excavations of the joint expedition of the British Museum and 

 the University Museum, Philadelphia, were continued at Ur under 

 the leadership of Mr. C. L. Woolley. Further portions of the temple - 

 enclosure were cleared, many tablets and some highly interesting 

 reliefs were discovered, and at the end of the year work had been 

 commenced on a cemetery of the 4th millennium B.C., which promised 

 most fruitful results. 



In the spring Mr. T. A. Joyce conducted an expedition to Lubaantun, 

 in British Honduras, where preliminary work had been done in the 

 previous year by Dr. Gann, Lady Richmond Brown, and Mr. F. A. 

 Mitchell- Hedges. A plateau was cleared, covered with masonry 

 platforms, pyramids, and other buildings, in three or four successive 

 periods of architecture, showing that the site must have been occupied 

 and used by a large population over a long period of time, the par- 

 ticulars of which have still to be discovered by further investigations. 



Exhibitions of the results of the cam^Daigns at Ur and Lubaautuii 

 were held in the Museum in the course of the year. 



