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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
it is clearly impossible to distinguish the class of persons who would be likely to cut and steal wood. This absolute prohibition, which thus seems to be necessary in any case, has the additional advantage of tending to prevent damage by fire or by trampling which might be caused through the carelessness of shooting and picnic parties.
5. As the prohibition will be absolute, regulations in the Schedule to the Wild Birds Ordinance, 1922, Ordinance No. 15 of 1922, are being amended so as to prohibit the shooting or taking of game in an area prohibited under the present Ordinance, or the entry into such an area The in pursuit of game or for the purpose of taking nests or eggs. regulations in question will be further amended so as to provide for the insertion on the form of game licence of a note drawing attention to the prohibition now proposed. A draft of the proposed regulations is published with this Bill.
6. The Ordinance does not apply to the New Territories (other than New Kowloon), and the only area which it is at present proposed to declare a prohibited area is a certain portion of the hillside between Tai Tam Harbour on the west and Big Wave Bay and Shek O on the east.
FINANCIAL REVIEW.
Members of the
H.E. THE GOVERNOR said-Honourable Legislative Council,-When framing the Colony's budget for a future year, it is always wise to look back over the past, in order to estimate the stability of our financial position, to measure the rate of colonial progress and development, and thereby to get an insight (if possible) Such retrospect is into what the coming years have in store for us. valuable even in normal times; but, when times are abnormal, when the Colony has been subjected to special storm and strain, when China-of which Hong Kong is geographically speaking a part has been swept by Bolshevism and devastated by civil war, and when an end of the chaos and anarchy now unhappily prevalent in the Eighteen Provinces is not yet in sight, retrospect becomes essential and must be carried further into the past than usual. On this occasion, therefore, as a preface to the introduction of next year's budget by the Colonial Secretary, I propose briefly to review the Colony's financial history for the past thirty years, from 1897 to 1926, both years included.
Chronologists reckon thirty years to be a generation, and the thirty years in question do in fact coincide with the service in Hong Kong of several official members now seated at this Council table. They coincide very nearly with the period of my own experience of Hong Kong: and there are also unofficial members of this Council who have had personal knowledge of Hong Kong throughout these years. I have, however, chosen this period mainly for three other reasons, the first being that it is practically co-extensive with the time during which the New Territories have formed part of the Colony,
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