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The Court at present consists of three members:-
1. CHARLES MCILVAINE MESSER.
2. CECIL CLEMENTI.
3. JOHN ROSKRUGE WOD.
Commencement.
4. To pass in brief review the operations of the Land Court. The claims collected previously to the institution of the Court in 1899 and 1900 by Messrs. MESSER and KEMP were insufficient for any purpose other than a temporary Crown Rent Roll and could not he used. A large part of the New Territories had been surveyed field by field on the 16" scale and it was decided to show on these maps the boundaries of holdings. With the exception of these maps the Land Court had nothing on which to base operations.
✓ Method.
5. The procedure adopted was described by Mr. GoMPERTZ. (c.f. Gazette 1901 p. 916.)
"The initial step is to select and mark out the boundaries of a District and a notification from His Excellency in the Gazette then fixes a date after which no claims in respect of that District will be received by the Court. Notices are pub- lished directing claimants to attend the Court where the proper forms are filled in for them by the clerical staff. A demarcation party is sent out and persons are invited to attend and give particulars of ownership pointing out their land, the outlines of which are then put in on the Cadastral Map with an appropriate lot number."
(C
'Finally if we suppose that the last day of receiving claims in "X District" is the 31st July, on the 1st August the Court will be in possession of the following documents :-
(a.) Cadastral Maps showing the exact position of every claim.
(b.) A statement prepared by the Survey Department giving the areas
of every claim in acres to two decimal points.
(c.) The claim forms signed by the claimants themselves.
(d.) The Demarcation books giving particulars as to ownership, nature
of cultivation, &c., collected on the ground."
"The undisputed claims must then be separated from those which are con- tested. The latter can be easily picked out for where the same lot number is found on more than one claim the ownership of the land to which that number relates is obviously contested, while conversely where there is only one claim to a lot, the ownership of that lot is not in dispute." This method has in working justified its adoption.
Scale adopted in Survey.
6. The smallness of the scale used in the Cadastral Survey (16") affected the efficiency of the work in the early stages; Mr. GOMPERTZ has recorded this fact and the adoption of a larger scale as follows (c.f. Gazette 1902 p. 701):-
"It becoming apparent early in 1901 that the 16" scale was not large enough to enable (1) village sites, (2) the greater part of the cultivated holdings within the deep narrow valleys among the hills to be properly surveyed, in the month of February, His Excellency authorized a scale of 32" being employed whenever the Land Court shall agree with the Survey Officer that its adoption was neccssary. In Districts in which the survey had been completed before the change of scale had been decided upon, no detailed survey of village sites was available. In such cases all houses (including schools, temples, out-houses and the like) have been numbered village by village, and demarcation registers have been made from this starting point, demarcation tickets being issued, to allow householders to report their interests in the ordinary way.
"
From this point the 16 scale was abandoned and the 32" scale adopted. The 32" scale was also used for a resurvey of New Kowloon, while the 64" scale was used for a special survey of New Kowloon City.
Claims which were too large for the Cadastral Survey were surveyed separately.
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