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3. As the past history of garden management is a subject upon which I cannot touch, in the limits of this letter, except in the briefest manner, I would beg Your Lordship's attention only to a few leading facts, but more to the manner in which the service was organised. One fact especially is that Mr. Ford was apportioned to the Hong Kong Civil Service as a branch of the Public Works Department under the general supervision of the Surveyor General of the Colony, and that therefore upon his arrival here, he simply took over the garden and tree-planting duties.
4. It happened however that a few months after Mr. Ford's appointment, Governor MacDonnell had a serious difference with Mr. Morsom, the Surveyor General. Consequently, the Governor detached Mr. Ford from the Public Works office (vide Appendix A), substituting for the authority of the Surveyor General the supervision of a Garden Committee of five gentlemen with Mr. Hardy, R.B., Assistant Surveyor General (vide Appendix B), as their manager and adviser. Shortly after, upon Morsom's retirement from the service, Captain Starcy, R.E., succeeded him as Surveyor General, retaining all his functions at the Garden Board.
In 1873, I arrived in the Colony and succeeded Captain Starcy, R.E., in his dual office of Surveyor General and manager to the Garden Committee, and it was a matter of considerable regret to me that...