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President. The lecturers, who are Government officials or private medical practitioners, each receive a small honorarium, the funds being derived from the fees of the students, a Government grant-in-aid of $2,500, and certain legacies and bequests. The minimum course of study is five years, and the preliminary examination has been accepted by the General Medical Council of Great Britain. 125 students had been enrolled up to last December, and of these 43 have become qualified licentiates. Most of the licentiates have settled in the Colony, and are exerting a most useful influence in the direction of displacing native medical methods and popularising Western medical and sanitary knowledge, while a considerable number are employed as resident surgeons in the hospitals for Chinese and as medical officers in charge of the Public Dispensaries. The work of the College has thus far been carried on in lecture-rooms and laboratories made available in various hospitals, etc., in different parts of the City. When the Hongkong University is open, the College will be merged into its Faculty of Medicine.
The City Hall receives an annual grant of $1,200 from Government. It contains a theatre, some large rooms which are used for balls, meetings, concerts, etc., a museum in which are some very fair specimens, and a large reference and lending library, to which new volumes are added from time to time, as funds will allow. The building was erected in 1866-9 by subscription.
Small grants are also given to the Italian Convent ($1,280), the French Convent (both of which take in and tend abandoned or sick infants), the West Point Orphanage, the Seamen's Hospital, and other charitable institutions.
The Chinese Public Dispensaries are institutions maintained in order to provide the Chinese with the services of doctors, whose certificates will be accepted by the Registrar of Deaths, and with the services of interpreters, who can assist the inmates of houses, where a case of infectious disease has occurred. Coolies are engaged and ambulances and dead vans provided in order to remove cases of infectious disease to the Infectious Diseases Hospital and dead bodies to the Mortuary. The Dispensaries receive sick infants and send them to one or other of the Convents and arrange for the burial of dead infants. Free advice and medicine are given and patients are attended at their houses. There are eight Dispensaries in existence, including one for the boat population on a hulk in Causeway Bay. The total cost of maintenance, which is defrayed by voluntary subscription, was $33,434. The Dispensaries are conducted by committees under the chairmanship of the Registrar General.
VIII—CRIMINAL AND POLICE.
The total of all cases reported to the Police was 9,289, being a decrease of 500 or 5% as compared with 1910. There was in 1911 a decrease in serious offences of 25 or 0.69% as compared with the previous year. The number of serious offences reported was 167 over the average of the quinquennial period commencing with the