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of shore the great bulk of the finds made by Professor Shelishcar were made. Evidently these objects were the sediment, as it were, or the rejecta of the sand-getting operations. Even now the same thing happens; when the sand junks have been there, one finds always a few bits of broken pottery left about near the place they have dug, and the junk people say that more things used to turn up about two years ago. I watched operations one day recently and saw a regular amazon of a woman sweeping the sand into the coolies' baskets which were ranged at her feet in front of the sand-face: the work is donc very rapidly and there is no concern for what may be mixed up with the sand unless it gets in the way: thus small objects such as the bits I pick- up at Aberdeen can only by the merest luck escape removal and dispersal. That day, the woman's shovel revealed at one sweep a clump of fragments: had I not rescued them, they would have been either pitched aside or gone into the next basket. Now this makes certain difficulties as to the determina- tion of the find-spots. In the ridges that divide the shore, a certain number of things have been found, mostly larger fragments (e.g. fragment 37 below which was dug up near the foreground of Plate 32, figure 5): this would seem not to have been the original site of the objects but they probably came there through being cast aside in the digging and then being later on cover- ed in with the earthy soil which the sand-coolies skim off when they begin a new patch. In the general view Plate 32, 1 and 3, the untidiness of the shore as a result of the digging and banking can be easily detected in the shore views Plate 32, figures 4 and 5, it is this that produces the billowing surface.
Landward from this strip comes the face of the sand-back from which sand is now being taken. On top is a turfed strip between the edge and the fields. The level of the turf, Piate 32, (figure 5, top), is just about 13 feet above the foot of the present sand-slopc. The sand is very hard and fine (quartz in great part) so that it slides easily. Thus a clear vertical face on the sand cliff does not exist for long after a digging; there is sooner or later a collapse and a quantity of material slides down from the top to re-establish the slope which is some 18-20 feet along its inclined surface. Obviously it will happen that an object which is found some ten feet or more down this surface and even some inches deep in the sand has come down with the slide from higher up of this I have had personal experience when our party was digging, as I felt with my bare foot in the sand some inches deep when I was half-way down the slope a piece of pottery which had escaped the notice of the person digging above and of which he at that moment secured another fragment that fitted, showing that my piece had come down all unnoticed in the sliding sand. I have endeavoured to control this by digging for my per- sonal inspection a series of steps from bottom to top of the slope making sure to reach into virgin ground each time. This has confirmed me in the view that the "rich vein is only from about one foot and a half to four feet beneath the present turf level: below that fewer sherds are found and even these cease at about six feet. However it would require systematic lifting of the sand, level by level, as well as careful shoring up of the cuts to counter- act these difficulties—a task requiring much labour and consequent expense. Such digging as I have attempted has necessarily been economical to the limits
The Hong Kong Naturalist.
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The Hong Kong Naturalist.
Plate 32.
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