ENG-1957 — Page 373

SPORT AND RECREATION

319

24 parks, public playgrounds and rest gardens, twelve have provision for ball games.

Playgrounds are being developed continuously. In Decem- ber work was in progress on three new major playgrounds, and planning was well advanced on further schemes. Apart from the large parks and formal playgrounds, a great deal can be done to improve the appearance of the city by the tidying up and laying out of small derelict roadside areas. For the first time a special vote of $900,000 was created for this purpose in the financial year 1956-7.

The Gardens Division of the Urban Services Department carries out or supervises all gardening development and maintenance in public recreation areas, most grounds of Government schools, hospitals, offices and quarters, and the grassed areas at the Airport, which cover a total area of approximately 428 acres. Ornamental trees, shrubs, and other plants are grown in five nurseries which can produce several thousand potted plants for decoration on official occasions.

The division also contains a botanical section responsible for the care and growth of the collection of over 27,000 specimens in the Colonial Herbarium. As well as maintain- ing this collection, started by Richard Brinsley Hinds in 1841, the section maintains contact with institutions abroad and deals with the phyto-sanitary control of plants leaving the Colony.

The Li Cheng Uk Tomb. In the middle of the year the Li Cheng Uk Tomb and rest garden were opened daily to the public for a nominal entrance fee. This tomb, which is dated provisionally to the Later Han or the Six Dynasties period, was discovered in 1955 in the course of the levelling of a low mound on a building site in Kowloon. The contents of the tomb, which were described in more detail in Chapter 19 of the 1955 Annual Report, are displayed in a small museum, whilst the tomb itself, which is entered from the museum, has been given permanent protection against