provisions of Part II of the New Territories Ordinance. The Ordinance provides that all such deeds, etc., so registered shall have priority accord- ing to the priority of their respective dates of registration, and that with the exception of bona fide leases at rack rents for any term not exceeding three years, all such deeds, etc., which are not registered shall, as against any subsequent bona fide purchaser or mortgagee for valuable consideration, be absolutely null and void. No notice, actual or cons- tructive, of any prior unregistered instrument affects the priority of any duly registered instrument. Where, however, deeds etc. are registered within one month of execution, if executed in the Colony, or, if executed elsewhere, within twelve months of execution, they take priority according to the respective dates thereof. Legally the system is one of registration of deeds and not of title; but in view of the above provisions instruments relating to land are always registered promptly after execution, and the Land Registers show the devolution of title to each property and all incumbrances on it.
21. Table III shows the number of instruments registered in each year since 1955–56; Table IV, the numbers of instruments by categories in each year since 1960-61; and Table V, the total considerations in the principal categories for each year since 1955–56.
22. A new record number of 49,775 instruments was registered in 1964-65. The number of instruments registered has risen every year during the past twelve years and, as may be seen from Table III, has quadrupled in the last ten years and doubled in the last five. The year's increase of 12,221, or 32.5%, over the previous year's figure is itself more than the total for the whole of 1955–56.
23. The figures given in Table IV show that there were substantial increases in almost all categories of instruments registered. The number of assignments in 1964-65 jumped by 6,917 (52%) over the 1963–64 total to reach the new record figure of 20,191. Of these, 1,223 were assign- ments of whole lots, sections or subsections, and 18,968 assignments of undivided shares in land coupled with the right to use one or more units in the building erected thereon. It was the latter category that accounted for the overall increase, the number of assignments in the former category being actually much lower than last year.
24. The total of the considerations in all assignments also rose to a new record total, $1,496,791,000, of which $982,636,000 represents the total considerations in assignments of undivided shares. Dividing this last total by 18,968, the number of assignments of undivided shares, one gets an average consideration of about $51,000 for transactions
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