[1] "Select Committee on Postage, First Report, 1838," p. 122, questions 1829, 1830.

[2] It should be remembered that newspapers had for many years (since 1712) been the subject of a tax, and until 1855, when the newspaper tax was abolished, such papers passed through the post free.

[3] Hansard, xxxiii., p. 1214.

[4] AthenÆum, No. 1836, January 3, 1863, p. 18.

[5] Nos. 1834 (December 20, 1862) and 1835 (December 27, 1862).

[6] Second edition 1838.

[7] Mr. John Collins Francis refers to this issue in his two volumes, "John Francis and The AthenÆum," published by Bentley in 1888.

[8] It is said to have cost £1,000; the art of the label cost, to Mr. Corbould £12 12s., to Mr. Heath £52 10s.

[9] "Fifty Years of Public Life," p. 63.

[10] Illustrated in "British Central Africa and Nyasaland Protectorate," by Fred J. Melville, 1909.

[11] See further in "The Postage Stamps of the Fiji Islands," by Charles J. Phillips, 1908.

[12] See the obituary of Charles Heath in The Art Journal, 1849, p. 20, and the argument in my "Great Britain: Line-engraved Stamps."

[13] I mention these and certain other quotations, not as standard valuations, but to indicate the comparative importance of these and other factors in determining the rarity of individual specimens.

[14] The supersession of the stamps of the different islands lasted from October, 1890, to 1899 in Virgin Islands and 1903 in the other groups, when separate stamps were again issued by the five Presidencies (St. Christopher and Nevis being in one Presidency) of the Leeward Islands, the general and separate issues being in concurrent circulation.

[15] The Oceanic Settlements comprise the more easterly French islands, administered by a Governor, with Privy and Administrative Councils, &c., the seat of government being at Papeete, in Tahiti.

[16] See The Postage Stamp, vi. 153.

[17] Earlier in the same year this boudoir gossiper had answered no fewer than three correspondents, "Mercury," "Daniel," and "Milly" at one shot thus: "We cannot encourage 'exchanging foreign stamps,' for we do not see the smallest good resulting from it. This foreign stamp-collecting has been a mania, which is at length dying out. Were the stamps works of art, then the collecting them might be justified. Were they, in short, anything but bits of defaced printing, totally worthless, we would try to say something in their favour. There are now so many lithographic forgeries in the market that he is the cleverest of the clever who can detect the spurious stamps from the true."—The Young Ladies' Journal, April 27, 1864.

[18] The pseudonym of Dr. Legrand.

[19] See further "Postage Stamps of the Hawaiian Islands in the Collection of Henry J. Crocker," described and illustrated by Fred J. Melville, London, 1908.

[20] "The Stamp Collector," by W. J. Hardy and E. D. Bacon, 1897.

[21] The Philatelist, vol. iii. pp. 85, 86.

[22] Ante, p. 167.

[23] "The Tapling Collection of Stamps and Postal Stationery at the British Museum," by Fred J. Melville.

[24] "Postage Stamps and their Collection," by Warren H. Colson, Boston, 1907.