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Biology Department of the University. Unfortunately in the subsequent hostilities all preserved specimens, records and books were completely destroyed. In 1941 the Hong Kong Government voted the sum of $220,000 to cover the cost of the building of a Fisheries Research Station, and building began on a site near the village of Aberdeen in the Autumn. This was interrupted by the Japanese attack on the Colony. During the months immediately preceding the Japanese attack research was carried out on the tanning of nets and on the extraction of oil from the livers of different local fish. This work showed that it was possible to increase greatly the efficiency of the Chinese method of tanning by a small and easily grasped modification, and, secondly, that the livers of large sharks yielded oil very rich in vitamin A. Enough livers were obtained to yield a quantity of valuable oil suitable for hospital use and a small reserve of this oil was built up against an emergency. Mr. Lin, who during the Japanese occupation remained in Hong Kong, was able to continue the manufacture of this oil and to supply Stanley Internment Camp with it through the medium of the Inter- national Red Cross. Thousands of internees received the oil as a prophylactic against vitamin A deficiency and it proved of great value in the treatment of tropical ulcers and eye troubles caused by the deficiency of this vitamin in the camp diet.

Natural History

The flora of Hong Kong has been very fully, though not completely, described in Flora Honkongensis by G. B. Bentham, published in 1861 and in the Flora of Kwangtung and Hong Kong by S. T. Dunn and W. J. Tutcher, published in 1912. Attention has in particular been paid in recent years to the flowering shrubs and trees and the orchids; numerous papers in the Hong Kong Naturalist and three small books have been published on these plants. Food and Flowers, edited by Dr. G. A. C. Herklots and issued by the Agricultural Depart- ment and the Gardens Department in June, 1948, gives, amongst other information, an account of rice cultivation and of trials carried out with various vegetables and details of some flowering shrubs, melastoma and related genera. The only book published on the fauna of the Colony was one on the Butterflies of Hong Kong by Mr. J. C. Kershaw in 1905. This book has been out of print for many years and

is extremely scarce. Attention has been paid in particular to the snakes, birds, mammals and butterflies, and many papers have been published. There is a need for a comprehensive natural history book dealing with the more conspicuous flowers and trees, the commoner insects and the larger animals.

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