that of the 24,610 memorials received no less than 7,400 required correction, usually because of some trivial slip or omission. All this naturally adds greatly to the work of the Land Office and tends to delay registration. The large proportions of errors (30%, which com- pares with 7% in the Register of Sasines in Scotland) reflects the great strain which the enormous increase in conveyancing caused by the building boom has placed on Solicitors, many of whom are short of experienced conveyancing clerks.
10. The transactions effected by the instruments to which the memo- rials relate are recorded in the land registers, which are rather like ledgers, the original leaseholder of a lot and successive assignees being recorded on the left hand page of the folio, while mortgages, leases, agreements, and assignments of sections are recorded on the right-hand page. Where a section is carved out of a lot, it is transferred to a new folio, which is kept in the same way. Since the general adoption a few years ago of the practice of selling flats by assigning an undivided share in the land coupled with the right to the exclusive possession of the flat, a new form of register called a Sub-division Register has been devised, having a separate folio for each flat in a building. Some idea of the rapidity with which this practice has developed may be gained from the fact that since 1956 102 Sub-division Registers have been opened. Two bookbinders are employed whole time in the Department binding memorials and rebinding the registers which are subject to a great deal of handling daily. The tremendous numbers of memorials now being received annually create a considerable storage problem. The total number of memorials received in the 116 years of the Land Office's existence up to 31st March, 1961 was 337,277, of which over 100,000, requiring some 300 feet of shelving, have been received in the past six years. The day is therefore not far distant when the Land Office strong- room will have to be greatly expanded.
Searches
11. An essential preliminary to every land transaction is a search in the land registers to ascertain who is registered as the owner of the property and what, if any, incumbrances are registered against it. During the year 15,337 searches were made by members of the public, a fee of $2 being charged for each lot or section of a lot for which records are produced. The vast majority of these searches were carried out by Solicitors' clerks, who are familiar with the Land Office system of keeping the registers. In addition to these, thousands of searches
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