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CLIMATE.
The average monthly temperature throughout the year has been 71.9° F as compared with 72.2° F during 1898; the maximum monthly temperature was attained in July, as in former years when it reached 82.9° F and the minimum monthly temperature was recorded in the month of January, being 59.0° F.
The highest recorded temperature during the year was 92.9° F on August 4th and the lowest was 43.6° F on January 3rd.
The total rainfall for the year was 72.7 inches as compared with 57.025 inches in 1898 and 100.03 inches in 1897; the wettest months were August with 19.98 inches and June with 18.975 inches, and the driest was January with 0.185 incl.
The greatest amount of rain which fell on any one day was 5.22 inches on August 23rd while no rain fell on 237 days of the year; the relative humidity of the atmosphere throughout the year was 75 per cent, being lowest in November when it was 62 per cent and highest in August when it was 85 per cent. The average daily amount of sunshine throughout the year was 5.67 hours and 34 days only was no sunshine recorded.
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These figures have been calculated from the monthly Reports issued by the Director of the Hongkong Observatory; the temperatures are taken at 108 feet above mean sea-level and at 4 feet above the grass.
GENERAL SANITARY CONDITION.
Some progress has been made during the past year towards the improvement of the general sanitary condition of the Colony, but the greatest event of the year has been the passing, on November 28th, of the Insanitary Properties Ordinance, 1899, some sections of which came into force on March 1st, 1900, others on June 1st, 1900, while others again became operative on the passing of the Ordi- nance. By the provisions of this Ordinance every domestic building hereafter erected must have an open space in the rear proportionate to the depth of the house. and varying from about 110 square feet to about 200 square feet in area, while every existing domestic building must be provided with an open space of not less than 50 square feet, in the rear, and thus for the first time in the history of sanitary legislation in this Colony, the erection of that most unhealthy type of dwellings-the back-to-back houses-is definitely prohibited. This Ordinance also deals with such matters as the construction of cubicles and mezzanine floors and the making up of private streets and lanes and also enacts that "no building erected on land acquired from the Crown after the passing of this Ordinance shall exceed in height one and a half times the width of the street upon which such building fronts," but as almost all the land in the City of Victoria (except that in the resumed area of Taiping- shan) has already passed out of the bands of the Crown, I am afraid that this will have very little effect in abating the mischief which is caused by the excessive height of buildings, and by the various defects in the existing scale, which permit the owners of private streets, and of the land abutting on Crown streets, the width of which may exceed 15 feet by an inch or two to erect buildings of a height of 40 feet fronting thereon, and which permit the owners of land abutting on a street which barely exceeds 20 feet in width to erect thereon buildings of a height of 45 feet and then farther to obstruct more than half the width of such street with verandahs and balconies. The result of this is that, except in the widest main streets such as Queen's Road and the Praya the ground-floor rooms of almost all Chinese houses are so dark as to be barely habitable, and although the new Ordinance prohibits the erection of cubicles in all ground-floor rooms, yet I fear that this will not effect the desired remedy and there is little doubt that further legislation will be necessary at no distant date to curtail the present excessive height of buildings especially in the crowded districts of the City of Victoria.
The need for additional public latrines and urinals is becoming more and more urgent every year, and yet no addition has been made during 1899 to the number of such conveniences, either in the city or elsewhere in the Colony. One small public latrine has, it is true, been erected at the south end of Ship Street, Wanchai, but merely to replace a private latrine a few yards distant and which was to have been demolished at the end of the year. The old wooden latrine with two seats on Leighton's Hill Road has also been replaced by an iron structure with six seats but there are still only 29 latrines throughout the entire city, with but 689 seats for a Chinese male population of almost 120,000. Moreover, only 12 of these latrines have been erected by the Government, the remainder being privately owned, and therefore not free. Again there are only three public urinals throughout the entire city, so that it is little wonder that every back lane and every storm-water gully is more or less used as a urinal by coolies, with the result that complaints are constant from householders and merchants as to the offensive smells arising from these places.
The water-supply of the Colony again proved deficient during the year, and a service varying from one to four hours only was allowed to the city for a period of eight weeks during the months of April to June, while in Kowloon peninsula an intermittent supply only could be maintained from January 7th until May 8th (four months).