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in addition to other punishments. That law had a very wonderful effect. It did not apply of course to women, and hence female child-stealers were more common than males.

Children are stolen (1°) to be ransomed.

(2°) to be sold.

When a child is missing the parents advertise in the public thoroughfares and offer rewards, and the person who has stolen the child or a confederate pretends to find the child and obtains the reward, or, what is more frequent when the children (whether males or females) are stolen from Canton or the country, the children are sold to be adopted sons or domestic servants. There are generally four or five per- sons engaged in this transaction. The child-stealer manages to get three or four old women to find out somebody who wants to buy a son or daughter or servant. The child has been carefully taught to call its kidnapper "mother" or "aunt"; or "father" or "uncle, if a man. The intending purchaser sees the child and in- quires how it comes to be sold. The go-between and other women vouch that it is owing to the poverty of the parents, and the child when questioned will repeat per- haps that its father is dead, and that the person offering it for sale is the mother. Grief at parting with the child is easily assumed to keep up appearances. A bill of sale is made out, the money is paid, and the kidnapper goes away with the proceeds. The old women who are invariably called in to help in the transaction get a dollar or two, and the purchaser, who may have bought the child according to Chinese custom in all good faith, finds himself in the hands of the Chinese Mandarins or, if in Hong- kong, at the Police Court. There is this difference, however, in the action taken before the different authorities. In China the child's parents cannot get back the child until the purchaser has been refunded what he has paid (I assume that the formal documents have passed); whereas in the English Court the purchaser is very lucky if he can prove that he believed he got the child from its legal custodians. case occurred in the beginning of this year, Wong a Hoi's case. in reference to a kidnapped or decoyed girl who was taken to Canton from here and sold for $65. A man who recommended the seller was also security as go-between. This Government applied to the British Consul to get the girl back. I gave a letter addressed to the Consul to a witness and the mother of the girl. An official from the Nam Hoi Magis- trate's Yamen went to the people who had the girl. The guarantor had to pay up the money and the girl was sent down here through the Consul. The Chinese authori- ties, I was informed, through the Po Leung Kuk, made the guarantor pay up before taking away the child. The fact therefore that the Chinese systems of adoption and service thus recognise money payments would seem to render Hongkong a desirable market, seeing moreover that the punishment here for kidnapping compared with that of China is of the mildest nature; and hence that crime would appear, at least to some extent, to be fostered and encourages by such systems being permitted here. There are checks and considerations, however, which counteract the evil, as will presently appear.

IV.

A

Suggestions for the better prevention of abuses arising from the Chinese systems of Child Adoption and Domestic Service; checks already existing.

The abuses arising from the Chinese system of child adoption and purchased service are therefore:-

1o. Fraud in causing females to be reared and pawned or sold as prostitutes when the parents parted voluntarily with their children for adoption or service.

2. Kidnapping of male and female children because they can be sold for con-

siderable sums of money.

I have tried to find out what is the number of children, male and female, in the Colony who are adopted sons and daughters and also the number of purchased ser-