ENG-1956 — Page 179

PUBLIC HEALTH

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shows. Responsibility for amenity tree-planting in streets in Kowloon was transferred to the Division during the year (responsibility for this work in Hong Kong having been taken over in 1955).

The need for more public open spaces, playing-fields and children's playgrounds makes itself continually felt. A pro- gramme for future development was drawn up, and several new areas were put into use during the year. Considerable progress was made in the development of Victoria Park on the Causeway Bay Reclamation. Tree-lined paths, hard- surfaced games pitches and two children's playgrounds were laid out, and the Public Department commenced the construc- tion of a public swimming-pool, changing rooms, pavilions and service buildings.

Careful thought was given to the preservation of the his- toric Sung Wong Toi monument at Kai Tak, and, after consultations with the local Kai Fong Welfare Association and the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society, a rest garden in the appropriate style of the Sung Dynasty has been built close to the original position of the memorial. The inscribed portion of the stone in its new setting is illustrated between pp. 204-205.

The botanical section is primarily concerned with the care of the Colonial Herbarium, housed in an air-conditioned room in the University. The collection consists of some 27,000 specimens, and is the work of a long line of botanists and plant explorers, whose work started in 1841 when Richard Brinsley Hinds made the first important collection of plants on the island of Hong Kong. Specimens and data are con- tinually being added as areas in the remote parts of the Colony are again botanically surveyed.

Multiplication of the solitary plant of the newly found Camellia granthamiana was put in hand, and propagating material distributed to institutions in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. An interesting but less spectacular find was a flourishing collection of Camellia oleifera, a species thought to have been extinct locally.