are at Shing Mun where a European company has the lease. The Japanese kept up a steady production during the occupation. To-day there are a hundred or so miners from these mines, which are temporarily closed, panning for placer wolfram in the bed of the Shing Mun River. Their output is presumably sold on the local market.
Kaolin, not excluding the great reserves of building stones and the sand and gravel deposits, is certainly the most valuable of the proved deposits in the Colony both in quantity and quality. It occurs everywhere in varying degrees of purity ranging from the best ball clay to the coarser varieties. Of the many deposits now being worked, the pit at Cha Kwo Ling is the most valuable and productive. Much of the clay from this pit is exported to Japan but some is used locally in the ceramic industry. Elsewhere other deposits are mined for the various brick, face powder, tooth powder and rubber companies.
The
There are stone quarries sited all round the coast. ornamental grey Hong Kong granite is most usually worked for building stone.
Sands and gravels are available in large quantities mainly from the raised beaches along the coasts.
During the year a few permits were issued, on a month to month basis, to small family concerns wishing to mine small amounts of ochres and clays.
Dr. F. Dixey, Geological Adviser to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, visited the Colony in June to discuss various aspects of the local mining and mineral problems, and to advise on the possibilities of underground water supplies. In his report he recommended the appointment of an Inspector of Mines and staff to regulate and control mining, and urged that legitimate mining should be actively encouraged.
In January, the Prospecting and Mining Regulations (1948) of the Colony were published in the Gazette.
A manuscript copy of the findings of the team of geologists, of the University of British Columbia, who, under the direction of the late Dean R. W. Brock, surveyed the Colony between 1923 and 1935 has now been received. After some editing, it is proposed to publish these findings as a Hong Kong Government Memoir. To accompany this memoir it is also proposed to print a geological map of the Colony, based on the 1935 edition of the 1/84,480 geological map. All efforts to trace the pre-war geological base maps in Japan have failed.
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