ENG-1949 — Page 160

Zoology

A survey of the fleas infesting house rats from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon was carried out by the Rodent Control Section. The mean number of the plague-carrying species of flea (known as Xenopsylla cheopis index) for each of the two common house rats was recorded monthly throughout the year and revealed considerable seasonal variation. Plague, the most serious disease transmitted to man by this flea, has not been known in the Colony for many years, though the knowledge acquired by such an investigation is considered to be of value from the epidemiological stand- point. It is hoped that the detailed results of this survey will be published in due course.

A short paper entitled Revision of the List of Greckoes Known to Occur in the Colony of Hong Kong by Mr. J. D. Romer, F.Z.S., will be published in COPEIA (Journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists) in 1950. Observation has indicated that the lizards of this family are now represented in Hong Kong by four species.

Archaeology

Prior to 1932, Dr. C. M. Heanley, Mr. W. Schofield and Professor J. L. Shellshear, D.S.O., had made some investiga- tions into local archaeology, and in that year Father D. J. Finn, S.J., began an intensive study of the subject. Between 1932 and 1936 he published in the Hong Kong Naturalist thirteen detailed and very fully illustrated articles (245 pages) on his own discoveries which he correlated with archaeological work on

on the

the Chinese mainland. Serious research on this subject suffered a set-back in 1936 with the death of Father Finn, but his work had drawn the attention of archaeologists in all parts of the world to this corner of East Asia. Father Finn's conclusion as to the date of the sites which he excavated was that they were representative of the middle of the first millenium B.C., and extended over the third quarter of that period. Since Father Finn's death, Father R. Maglioni has done some work in Hong Kong and considerably more in Kwangtung province, and has correlated the archaeology of Hong Kong with that of the mainland. His most recent paper appeared in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, January, 1938.

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