236
RECREATION
for the exhibition 'A Century of Hong Kong 1845-1945' which ran for 15 weeks.
The Government Collections of pictorial material consist of the Ho Tung Collection, the Chater Collection, and the Law and Sayer Collections. They contain more than 700 items including paintings, prints, engravings and photographs. They illustrate the growth and development of Hong Kong, and life in the Colony, Macau and the China Coast area during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries. Space within the City Hall does not allow for the permanent display of all this material but exhibitions under different titles and subjects are arranged from time to time. Thus this material is used for comparative, historic and artistic purposes. The Henry Yeung Collection of Chinese Ceramics forms the basis of the Museum's Collection of Chinese Antiquities. This collection comprises 166 pieces, and consists of some fine grave pottery of the Han Dynasty, a series of early bronze mirrors, and outstanding pieces of Ming porcelain. Throughout the year the collection of Chinese antiquities consisting of ceramics, sculpture, painting, textiles and bronze continued to grow. A number of paintings and sculptures had also been added to the collection of works by local artists.
A selection from the Maglioni Collection of archaeological material which was donated to the Government by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hong Kong in 1954, was exhibited in the City Hall Museum towards the end of the year. The rest of the archaeo- logical and book collection are at present on loan to the University where they are available to scholars and research students.
The City Hall Library now possesses a collection of approximately 160,000 items. About 60,000 books, of which one quarter are for children, are housed in the Library's lending departments, and consist of roughly equal numbers of books in Chinese and English. The lending department also contains a small music collection of about 1,500 items. The reference department houses some 15,000 volumes, together with the nuclei of map and picture collections; again about half the books are in Chinese. The remaining 73,500 volumes are all in Chinese, mostly classics. Although they do not yet appear in the Library's catalogues, the work of cataloguing them is going ahead, and they are meanwhile available on special request. Most of the uncatalogued books are from the Kotewall