and ethnographical interest that relate to the Hong Kong region of South China, we are fortunate in having an item dealing with the fall of the Sung dynasty and local relics relating to that dramatic and pathetic time; a note on the recovery in 1956 and 1966 of two cannon dating from the end of the Ming period; an article on Hong Kong mammals; and a study of a group of Hakka mountain villages in the New Territories by a Swedish anthropologist from Stockholm University who spent eleven months in Hong Kong in 1964-65. The 1966 Journal contained an account of the Five Great Clans of the New Territories by a British scholar, Dr. Hugh Baker, who spent several years in the New Territories recently, and an article ‘A Plea for a Regional Approach to Chinese History: the Case of the South China Coast' by Professor John Nolde, of the University of Maine, then a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong.
The Branch may therefore claim to have been making its contribution towards the elucidation of the little-studied history and sociology of the Hong Kong region. However, it is now time to study the urban area more intensively. Whilst the South China village has been examined by a number of scholars, in both the pre and post war periods, urban studies have received scant attention from scholars. In Hong Kong we have had an urban population for a hundred years. It is well to recall Governor Des Voeux's report of 1889 in which, describing the City of Victoria, he wrote:
"Going ashore our visitor would see..... in the Chinese quarters houses, constructed after a pattern peculiar to China, of almost equally solid materials, but packed so closely together and thronged so densely as to be in this respect probably without parallel in the world..... It is believed that over 100,000 people live within a certain district of the City of Victoria not exceeding one square mile in area. It is known that 1,600 people live in the space of a single acre.
These words serve to remind us that Hong Kong has an urban history and that the city has always been one in which over-crowding, housing and social problems and concern for public health have for long exercised the authorities. The records of the Hong Kong Government are available in considerable quantity and quality, both here in the Colonial Secretariat Library