CO129-306 - Governor Sir Blake - 1901 [8-9] — Page 578

tailed by the introduction of telephonic communication in a tropical climate where skilled labour is difficult to obtain, your Petitioner submit they should not be called upon to incur this liability when the Tramway Company could at a comparatively small additional cost while laying down their tramways for the first time instal a double trolley system instead of the single trolley system proposed and by so doing not only abstain from interfering with your Petitioners' electric currents but also thereby prevent their return currents from inflicting injury upon the gas, water and other underground pipes now existing or hereafter to be laid in the Colony and upon the Magnetic observations of the Observatory at Kowloon, where the erratic deflections produced by these currents will be of much greater magnitude than those due to terrestrial, solar, and other interesting causes now being observed, making further magnetic observations there entirely out of the question and destroying a chain of observations which cannot be continued elsewhere so as to form a link with the past.

4. Your Petitioners have already in their correspondence with the Colonial Secretary called Your Excellency's attention at some length to the opinions of experts as to the danger to underground metallic structures from the operation of electric currents and they do not wish to trouble Your Excellency on this subject except to point out that the large and fluctuating current necessary for the purpose of working an electric tramway is of a very different character from the almost inappreciably feeble current used by your Petitioner. And your Petitioners submit that on public grounds alone it is desirable...