the resulting damage. In some of the older registers the early folios have become barely legible owing to the rucking up of the paper on the constant opening and shutting of the register, and steps had to be taken to remove the damaged folios and replace them with written copies. The card system will thus save considerable sums in book-binding and re-writing costs.
Searches
29. 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. As from 1st April 1963 the Land Registration Fees (Amendment) Regula- tions, 1963, introduced a new system of fees for searches. Formerly, a fee of $2 was payable for each lot or section of a lot in respect of which records were produced, and as under modern conditions this often meant that a great many records had to be produced for the same lot, the fee was not economic. The new Regulations therefore prescribed a fee of $1 for each record produced with the proviso that where more than 100 records relating to the same sub-divided building were produced at the same time the maximum fee should be $100. To facilitate the operation of the new system, as from 1st June 1963 books of 100 $1 search tickets were made available for purchase by solicitors, whose clerks surrender one ticket for each record produced.
30. During the year, 54,505 searches were made by members of the public, the vast majority being made by solicitors' clerks who are familiar with the Land Office system of keeping the registers. In addition to these, thousands of searches were made for Government departments either by their own or by the Land Office staff. In order to cope with the tremendous increase in search work the search area was in October 1963 expanded to twice its former size, and equipped with 12 large search tables together capable of accommodating up to 50 searchers at any one time.
Stamp Duty
31. Due mainly to the increase in assignment considerations the total amount of stamp duty paid on instruments registered also increased by over $12,000,000 over the 1962-63 figure to a new all time record of $42,704,467.82.
Land Tenure
32. With the exception of St. John's Cathedral all land in the Colony is held leasehold from the Crown. In the very early days of the Colony,
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