In a recent letter I referred to the value of land in Florida and the rapidity with which appreciation has developed. The madness still runs on, I hear.
And in making some comparisons between some of the principal cities of this country and Shanghai, I Fecently was hard put to it to find anything of a reliable nature in the Iibraries here on conditions in the Model Settlement. Judge of my satis faction, therefore, to receive. by the last mail a volume with which Twas but vaguely acquainted—The China Architects and Builders Com-Fendium, for from it I was able to see that the average assessed value of land along the Bund is in the neighbourhood of Tis, 160,000 per But when I picked up this ca tremely useful Compendium—it by no. means misnamed—I was astounded to find the mass of coordinated and correlated information vital to the builder and the architect which the compilers bad managed to arrange between the covers. Not for a very long while have T come across a work of such technical importance to the building trades. From it one can gether reliable data having reference to land, property and building in Shanghai and Hankow, all manner of technical information which the newcomer often requires but in which direction he does not know to turn for it, and altogether I was impressed with the amount of careful work which had been pat into the book.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.