the extreme fluctuations of a few years ago. Letter and packet mail delivered in the Colony was estimated at 123,332,800, showing an increase of 8,235,800 or 7.15% over last year.
Air Mail
44. An estimated 29,072,700 air mail items were posted during the year exceeding the previous year's total by approximately 9.5%.
Forces Mail
45. Mails for Army, Royal Air Force and Naval establishments continued to be handled by the British Forces Post Office in close co- operation with this Department.
46. Arrangements were made for handling mail to and from various visiting foreign warships in accordance with the wishes of the respective overseas postal administrations.
Christmas Mails
47. An increase of 13.4% was recorded in postings during Christmas 1965. Approximately 7.6 million items were posted during the period 18th-24th December, 1965 against 6.7 millions items posted during the same period in 1964.
Chinese New Year
48. During the nine day period over the Chinese New Year a total of 4,570,000 items were machine date-stamped as compared with 4,380,000 during the same period last year, an increase of 4.3%.
Parcel Post
49. Parcel post traffic continued to rise; a total of 1,906,990 (includ- ing 16,602 parcels in transit but excluding 5,128 internal parcels) being handled during the year, showing an increase of 120,979 parcels or 7% over last year's traffic.
50. Air parcels posted (including insured parcels) numbered 476,397 and those received 101,848 showing a rise of 18.5% as compared with the traffic of the previous year.
51. There were 29 cases of violation of parcel mails all of which occurred before the ship or aircraft arrived in the Colony or after the departure of the vessel. No cases of violation of mails whilst in the custody of this administration were recorded.
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