ENG-1968 — Page 185

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LAND AND HOUSING

end of the year about half of these had been supplied. It is expected that the whole contract will be completed by mid-1970.

The tasks of supplying the many hundreds of ground-control points for the aerial mapping and field-checking the advance plotted sheets has fully occupied a large proportion of the surveying and cartographic staff of the Crown Lands and Survey Office during the year.

In addition, over 400 sheets of the New Territories, previously surveyed by ground methods are being contoured under the contract. An extensive revision and re-drawing programme is now taking place to bring these sheets up-to-date and produce combined detail and contour plans.

Plans at smaller scales which have been revised and brought up- to-date include 53 sheets at scale 200 feet to one inch (of the urban areas); 44 sheets at scale 400 feet to one inch and 10 sheets at scale 800 feet to one inch (of the New Territories) and seven sheets at scale eight inches to one mile (of the urban areas).

Production of the new topographic maps of the Colony by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys in the United Kingdom continues. Some 20 plotted sheets at 1/10,000 scale (about six inches to one mile) were received during the year for field-checking and comple- tion by surveyors of this office.

About 20 sheets of the new series have now been published, some of which are already on sale in local bookshops.

The complete series will comprise 62 sheets which are printed in five colours and plotted on the same local Cassini grid as the large scale plans published by the Crown Lands and Survey Office. It is anticipated that the majority of the new sheets will be available by the end of 1969.

The first of the new 1/25,000 scale series, each of which is produced by photographic reduction of four 1/10,000 sheets, are now being compiled and should be available in 1970. At this scale 20 sheets will cover the whole Colony.

Dr E. A. Stephens, who instituted the Geological Survey Unit in 1967, returned to the United Kingdom in March, leaving Dr P. M. Allen to finish the geological mapping of the Colony.