BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL HISTORY) 17 



GENERAL PROGRESS AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM (NATURAL 



HISTORY). 



The total number of visitors during 1937 was 520,463 as compared 

 with 638,141 in 1936. The visitors on Sunday afternoons numbered 

 109,151. The number of persons attending the tours of the Official 

 Guide Lecturers during 1937 was 23,891, an increase of 444 on the figure 

 for 1936. The weekly biology broadcasts for school children, received in 

 the Board Room, and followed by short tours of the galleries to illustrate 

 the lectures were attended during the year by 774 children. Tours were 

 also arranged for 544 children who had listened to the broadcasts at school. 



Her Majesty Queen Mary and Their Royal Highnesses the Princesses 

 Elizabeth and Margaret Rose visited the Museum on 1st November, 

 and H.R.H. Princess Paul of Yugoslavia, accompanied by her two sons, 

 on 18th September. 



Lieutenant -Colonel W. Campbell Smith, M.C., T.D., was appointed 

 to the Keepership of Minerals on the retirement of Dr. G. F. Herbert 

 Smith; and Dr. F. W. Edwards was appointed Deputy Keeper in the 

 Department of Entomology. 



Lack of adequate accommodation for the collections continued to be 

 the outstanding problem with which the Museum was faced and the 

 Trustees maintained their pressure on the Treasury for the provision of 

 the buildings necessary to enable the collections to be properly arranged 

 and effectively used. 



Prior to his death in August the late Lord Rothschild had informed 

 the Trustees of his intention to bequeath to them his zoological Museum 

 at Tring and its contents ; and his Will gave effect to this intention with 

 the condition that the museum should be used for zoological research 

 as an annexe to the British Museum. Although no formal undertaking 

 could be given the Treasury agreed to approach ParUament for the 

 funds necessary to maintain the Tring Museum. 



An Air Raid Precautions Officer was appointed for the British 

 Museum and the British Museum (Natural History). He attended a 

 course at the Civihan Anti-Gas School at Falfield, and quahfied as a 

 first-class instructor. A scheme of air raid precautionary measures for 

 the Museum was prepared in accordance with the general instructions 

 issued by the Home Office and included the training of the Museum staff 

 as a whole and the organization of special first-aid, fire-fighting, and 

 decontamination services. 



Exhibition Oalleries. 



In the Department of Zoology considerable progress was made mth 

 the installation of exhibits in the New Whale Hall, where the construction 

 of a fife-size model of a Blue Whale, 90 feet long, was commenced. 

 Improvements were also made in the Bird Gallery. 



In the Department of Geology a skeleton of Smilodon californicus, a 

 mammal from the Pleistocene of California, was mounted and placed in 

 the Fossil Mammal Gallery. Dioramas of Triassic and Liassic Fishes 

 were added to the series in the Fossil Fish Gallery, and a large slab 

 containing Uintacrinus, a crinoid from the Cretaceous of U.S.A. was 

 fixed to the wall in Gallery VIII.- 



New exhibits of the Ashcroft Collection of Swiss Minerals and of 

 ' Natural Glasses ' were arranged in the Mineral Gallery. Cases at the west 



