REVIEW
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that claims could be investigated and recorded. This survey took three years to complete. About the same time the military produced a series of maps at different scales compiled from various sources and obviously based on some kind of triangulation system, but no record of this basic survey remains.
In the period between the two world wars, the military decided to produce a map using the new survey method of air photography. A Colonial Survey Section came to the Colony in 1924-5 and produced a triangulation on which a 1/20,000 map was based. This map was drawn on 24 sheets and was one of the first in the Empire to be produced by air survey methods. In addition the Crown Lands and Survey Office produced its own series of 200' to 1" and 50' to 1" sheets of the developed areas of the Colony at about this time. When the Colony was liberated in 1945, very little of the pre-war survey remained; the first task of the land surveyors not employed on land administration was to collect what data and plans they could find and reconstruct. By 1952 these problems of reconstruction had been largely overcome and atten- tion turned to the question of the New Territories.
The survey sheets produced 50 years previously were_inade- quate for efficient land administration and the Government decided to undertake a new survey at a scale of ~1/1,200 (100′ to 1"). Work started in 1953 and by 1962 over 72,000 acres of the more valuable and accessible parts of the New Territories had been surveyed. This progress, however, was not sufficient to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding community, quite apart from the fact that the plans produced were planimetric only, whereas for the many development and engineering schemes, con- tours were essential. At the end of 1962 tenders were invited on a world-wide basis for a complete air survey of the Colony. Early in 1963 the Government awarded the contract to Messrs Hunting Surveys Limited and the air photographs were taken during a fortunate period of clear weather in January and February. Ground control and all necessary local survey is being undertaken by the Government. The results of this work, in the form of up-to-date large scale contoured plans covering the greater part of the Colony, are likely to appear in stages from early 1964. The project is one of the largest of its kind in the Commonwealth.