Sessional_Paper_1905 — Page 466

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Rats and Plague in Kowloon.

The portion of the Colony on the Kowloon side of the harbour is divided for the purpose of the following charts and tables into nine districts as follows:-

District I.-European point of Tsim-sha-tsui. This district consists mostly of European houses with considerable open space about them. District II.-Chinese point of Tsim-sha-tsui. This consists chiefly of

Chinese tenement houses in a fair state of repair, and of godowns. District III.Yaumati. The most overcrowded district in Kowloon.

Many of the houses are old and in a poor state of repair.

District IV.-Mong-kok-tsui. A district chiefly of recently built Chinese

tenement houses.

Districts V and VIII.-Tai-kok-tsui, Fuk Isun Heung, and Sham-shui- po. Mostly old houses, many of which are one-storied and many in poor repair.

District VI.-Hunghom. Fairly good Chinese tenement houses.

District VII.-Kowloon City.

District IX.-Scattered villages, mostly of small one-storied houses.

Taking Kowloon, as a whole, excluding Kowloon City and Sham-shui-po, ¿.e., Old Kowloon, the curves and table shew that the rat epizootic presents four periods or waves of intensity, namely, in 1903 from the 31st to 35th weeks, the 37th to the 50th weeks, and in 1904 from the 1st to the 14th weeks and from the 16th to the 31st weeks.

The first wave of the curve corresponds with the tail end of the 1903 epide- demic as it does in the City of Victoria.

During the second rat wave there is no corresponding epidemic wave, there being no known case of human plague until the 11th week of 1904 which is well on into the third rat wave, namely, during its 11th week. This happens in spite of the fact that in the 43rd week of 1903 the rat curve reaches its maximum for this chart, the corresponding table shewing that 10 out of 39 rats caught and examined during the week were reported as plague infected.

It is worthy of note that the breaks in the whole rat curve, uamely, in the 36th, 51st and 52nd weeks of 1903, and in the 8th, 12th and 15th weeks of 1904, were not due to the want of rats for examination.

The table shews that in those weeks 23, 53, 32, 38, 42 and 36 rats were examined respectively from Kowloon.

The curve of the 1904 epidemic continues through the latter end of the third rat wave and the fourth rat wave reaches its maximum point two weeks after the fourth rat wave reaches it highest point.

No definite relation in point of time can be traced between the general rat curve and the beginning of the epidemic of 1904.