BRITISH MUSEUM 5 



Conference) ; the results of the Brunton Expedition to Badari and of 

 the Hyde -Campbell Thompson Expedition to Nineveh, Manuscripts 

 from the Cotton Collection in connexion with the Tercentenary of 

 Sir Robert Cotton ; books, MSS. and maps relating to N. America ; 

 and books, etc., connected with Faraday. 



The total number of objects added to the collections in 1931 was 

 397,825, an increase on 1930, but still below the total of 1929, which 

 was 441,778. 



The figures for the several Departments were as follows : — • 



Printed Books : 



Books and Pamphlets 35,691 



Serials and Parts of Volumes ... ... ... 109,659 



Maps and Atlases .. . ... ... ... ... 1,354 



Music 9,248 



Newspapers (single numbers) 217,790 



Miscellaneous 2,817 



Manuscripts 3,506 



Oriental Printed Books and MSS 2,062 



Prints and Drawings 6,259 



Prints and Drawings (Oriental) 198 



Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities 2,956 



Greek and Roman Antiquities 317 



British and Medieval Antiquities 518 



Ceramics and Ethnography ... 2,852 



Coins and Medals 2,598 



397,825 



The most important acquisition of the year was the upper part of a 

 life-size statue in dolerite of a Sumerian governor, probably Gudea or 

 his son Ur-Ningirsu, from a group found at Lagash. This remarkable 

 work of Babylonian sculpture was acquired with the help of the National 

 Art -Collections Fund, which made a substantial contribution and 

 advanced the money necessary to complete the purchase. 



Another Society, the Friends of the National Libraries, founded to 

 do for the Libraries the same kind of work as the other Fund does for 

 Art -Galleries, has made possible (by defraying the greater part of the 

 cost) the acquisition of a very important series of papers from Bishop 

 Percy's Collection, including about one -fourth of the existing autograph 

 material connected with Oliver Goldsmith (private letters, drafts of 

 literary works, etc.), as well as the copy of Speght's Chaucer 1598 which 

 contains Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, notably the reference to 

 Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, and Hamlet (the earliest 

 known notice of the last). 



The British Museum Quarterly, now in its sixth year (2s. 6d. a number ) 

 contains accounts and illustrations of the more important accessions, 

 making it unnecessary to mention more than a selection here. 



Printed Books and Maps. 



Among early printed books : Joannes de Turrecremata, Explanatio 

 in Psalterium, Cracow, about 1474-6 ; Valescus de Taranta, Philonium, 

 printed by Petrus Posa, Barcelona, 1484, the only known copy of the 



