V

THE
SCOPE OF
A MODERN
COLLECTION

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CHAPTER V

THE SCOPE OF A MODERN COLLECTION

The scope of the modern collector extends beyond the collection of actually issued stamps. He uses the stamps as a starting-point, but in the historical collection he works—as it is said the writers of detective stories used to do—backwards. He traces to its earliest inception the service which ultimately gave us the postage stamp. The collection is literary as well as philatelic: stamps are preceded by documents, prints and postal records of all kinds. The essays, as we term the suggestions for stamp designs submitted by artists, inventors or printers to a Government or other issuing authority, are of a high degree of interest and should be included in the historical collection, which will also show, where possible, the engraver's proofs taken in the course of his work, the finished die-proofs in black, plate-proofs in black and in colours, and the stamps, generally of the first printing, which are overprinted with the word "Specimen," or its equivalent in other languages, and are sent out to show postal officers what the newly-authorised stamps are like.

It is in this broad field that the collector in these days gets the most enjoyment; here he may heighten the pleasures of the hunt for philatelic and associated rariora. So many wonderful tales have been told of the fabulous fortunes acquired in the finding of a few old letters bearing stamps, that many a deal is frustrated by the uninitiated owner having too fanciful an idea of the value of his goods. It is rare in these days for such an incident to happen as I witnessed about twelve years ago. A gentleman, who had been turning out some old papers, came across an unsevered block of eight five-shilling British stamps which had been sent to his father, presumably as a remittance, somewhere in the early 'eighties. Here was £2 lying idle for years, but having luckily noticed them in clearing out these old papers, the gentleman thought he would see if they were still exchangeable at a post-office. At the first post-office he visited, he was told that the stamps were of an old issue, and that to get them converted into cash he would have to take them to Somerset House. On his way thither he noticed a stamp-dealer's show case, and apparently the possible interest of his specimens in the stamp-market then first occurred to him. He called in, and simply asked if the dealer would give him the £2, to save him the trouble of going on to Somerset House. The dealer, who had probably never seen an unsevered block of eight of the five-shillings "anchor" of 1882, obliged him readily, which he could well afford to do, as he passed on the stamps the same week to a collector for £75.

These things do happen, but in the "legitimate" stamp-collecting they are necessarily of rarer occurrence in these days of popular newspapers, over-educating in certain directions, or at least pandering to the common desire for a royal road to easy wealth. Many dealers have told me that it is their experience that, if they make a fair offer for valuable stamps submitted to them by the uninitiated, they never succeed in effecting a purchase at all in these days. The hawker of "finds" visits the stamp-shops to get an idea of the value of his wares, and plays off one dealer against another, with the result that it is necessary for the seller nowadays to state his price in the first instance.

The modern collection is specialised, that is to say, it deals with the postal history of a country or group of countries, instead of being a mere accumulation of specimens of the postage-stamps of the world. The advanced collector's albums of to-day are like the "association books" of the autograph collector, and indeed there have been many successes in "grangerising" the more important specialist monographs on stamps. One of the most interesting of these latter was the late Mr. Thomas Peacock's copy of "The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great Britain," written by the late Mr. (afterwards Judge) Philbrick and the late Mr. W. A. S. Westoby, and published by the Philatelic Society, London, in 1881. This book was sold by auction after Mr. Peacock's death, and realised only £19, its treasures not having been generally noticed before the sale; and it had been denuded of some of its wealth before I saw it, an act for which it is not easy to forgive the man of commerce. Peacock, as Inspector of Stamping at Somerset House (1853-93), had had intimate associations with the Hill family (of whom several members got comfortable positions in the Government service), and his connection with the mechanical side of the production of stamps enabled him to enrich his "Philbrick and Westoby" with copious notes, photographs, proofs, and stamps. Major Evans published most of the notes in Gibbons Stamp Weekly, and I had the privilege of adding the notes and some photographs from the original to my own copy of this book.

The collector "grangerising" a book on the British stamps to-day would, of course, work on the later authority, "The Adhesive Stamps of the British Isles," by the late Mr. Hastings E. Wright, and Mr. A. B. Creeke, jun., or on the sectional works of mine, of which Mr. W. H. Peckitt has issued large paper sets with special bindings for that purpose.

Generally, however, it is the stamp collection itself that is enriched by a variety of evidential matter and extensive notes by the owner. I have traced with fair success in my Great Britain collection the early history of the Post Office in this country, and have been fortunate enough to secure several of those raræ aves among historic documents, the proclamations relating to the post. Lord Crawford has the finest set of these in any private collection, and he has given a list of them in the catalogue of the philatelic section of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, with details of the location of all known copies. Acts of Parliament are not always convenient for inclusion with the stamp collection, but those relating to the issuance of stamps should be included where possible. The original of the "pretended Act" of the Commonwealth, to which I have already alluded, was a bookstall-bargain, costing a few shillings. The Uniform Penny Postage Acts of 1839 and 1840 should be included in the "association collection" of the stamps of Great Britain. My copy of the former is an original, but the 1840 one is a reprint. The years 1837-39 are of great importance in the history of postage-stamps; this was the first period of the essays and proposals for the system, to the advocacy of which Rowland Hill devoted himself with such tenacity of purpose. The published proposals, samples of the printed envelopes and covers of which were included in the "Ninth Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Management of the Post Office" (1837), and in Mr. Ashurst's "Facts and Reasons in support of Mr. Rowland Hill's Plan," are accessible to the specialist, and are the natural priores of the Mulready envelopes and covers. Not so accessible are the proposals of Forrester, Cheverton, Dickinson, and the minor lights who sought to provide the Treasury with the key to success in the adoption of prepayment. My "Forrester" is a perfect copy which came from the sale of the Philbrick library, where it had been overlooked and classed among some more ponderous but less treasured productions. The Cheverton papers and the metal dies intended for striking the impressions of his proposed labels remain in the possession of the inventor's relative, Miss Eliza Cooper, though casts have been made of the die for the collections of his Majesty the King, Lord Crawford, the British Museum, and the Royal Society. Mr. Lewis Evans, the grandson of the late Mr. John Dickinson, the great paper manufacturer—a contemporary of Fourdrinier and no mean rival of that genius—has a family treasure-store in the Dickinson correspondence with Rowland, Ormond, and Edwin Hill, and Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and particularly in a fine series of the patterns drawn up by Ormond Hill for the envelopes printed on Dickinson "thread" paper. Samples of the actual thread-papers (unprinted) as used for the Mulready and the later embossed envelopes and for the first Ten Pence and One Shilling embossed stamps are surprisingly rare—indeed, the authors of "Wright and Creeke" had only seen three-quarters of a mill-sheet at the time of writing their book. Mr. Lewis Evans has a number of the original samples, and has been good enough to allow me to prepare a complete transcript of the Dickinson papers, so far as they relate to postal matters, and I have included facsimiles of Ormond Hill's pattern instructions for the paper for the Ten Pence and Shilling adhesives in "Great Britain: Embossed Adhesive Stamps." These are items which form part of the life-history of the stamps or impressed stationery to which they relate, and are properly included with the stamp collection. But, except in the facsimile state, it will be obvious that but few can enrich their collections with items of so unique a character as Ormond Hill's carefully measured and ruled patterns and the autograph letters with instructions from Rowland Hill. But it is open to each specialist to introduce much individuality into a collection of Great Britain, or some other country, on these and similar lines.

Mention has already been made of the "find" of a quantity of the suggestions submitted to the Treasury in 1839 as a result of the offer of prize-money. These, too, are within the scope of the stamp collection carried out on the thorough historical basis, but then nearly every item being unique designs in pen and ink, in crayon and watercolour, and with manuscript matter, they are not to enrich more than one collection at a time. Yet there may be others of a different kind, each in itself unique, to be had at some future timely frustration of a holocaust of waste-paper.

The City Medal of William Wyon is closely associated with the history of our stamps, and used to be represented in my collection by a silver cliché, though it has now been replaced by the medal in silver. The medal is accessible to the collector in bronze, silver, or gold, but for most philatelic purposes a cliché showing only the obverse with the Queen's head is more convenient for mounting in the album, in a heavily sunk card, and protected with "glass" paper.

Original drawings are in nearly every case unique in themselves. Curiously enough, Mulready is supposed to have made two, possibly three, original sketches for his envelope, though even here each must be regarded as dissimilar from the others. One is a pencil design in outline, and is in the possession of His Majesty the King; the sketch was sold with other drawings and sketches by Christie, Manson & Woods on April 28, 1864, when it was stated by the auctioneer that this was the only sketch of the design made by the artist. It is practically the whole of the design as printed, and shares the peculiarity of the issued envelopes and covers that one of the flying angels is drawn without a second leg. Another sketch, according to Sir Henry Cole,[9] had this omission corrected before it was presented to Mr. Thomas Baring, M.P. If Sir Henry Cole were not mistaken, I must consider the sketch in the possession of Miss Jaffray to be yet a third "original," as it is lacking the winged four figures entirely.

Another pair of sketches of unequalled importance is in the possession of His Majesty. These are the two rough sketches in water-colours of the designs of the first (1840) One Penny and Two Pence stamps, submitted by Mr. Rowland Hill for approval of the Chancellor of the Exchequer: across the head of the one in black Rowland Hill has written "1d." in pencil, and similarly "2d." across the one in blue.

Original drawings of issued stamps very rarely leave the Government or printer's establishments, but in a few cases they have come on the market. A few years ago, in a large collection of colour-proofs of stamps printed by De La Rue, I saw the original drawing for the 1881 stamps of Cyprus, a unique item which went to embellish the specialised collection of the stamps of that colony formed by Mr. J. C. North, of Huddersfield. Shortly afterwards I myself secured two original colour drawings for the 1897 issue of British Central Africa.[10] I found them in the Strand, where, strange to say, many of these out-of-the-way items are often moderately priced, quite out of proportion to their interest and relative scarcity, for it is only in comparatively recent times that specialism has admitted these historic side-issues into the stamp album. Mr. Charles J. Phillips, one of those rare combinations of student and dealer, has permitted me to reproduce an original sketch of the canoe type of Fiji, from the fine collection of this colony formed by him.[11] The drawing was by Mr. Leslie J. Walker, Postmaster of Suva, and represents "a young colony (the canoe forging ahead towards the rising sun shows the progress of the colony); the crown is retained, indicating that it is a colony of England."

Other sources of stamp-engravings are of interest, and some are not difficult of access. A familiar one is the source of the picture on the "Omaha" $1 stamp which the United States Post Office literally "cribbed" from the etching published by Dunthorne, of Vigo Street, of the late Mr. MacWhirter's painting "The Vanguard." The American Post Office altered the title to "Western Cattle in Storm," but the picture is unmistakably the same. My statement of MacWhirter's authorship of the picture having been challenged by an artist, who was probably misled by the Scottish painter's devotion to landscape, led me to submit the stamp to Mr. MacWhirter, whose reply admits of no doubt.

A more scarce engraving, which was the basis of some of the most classic designs in the history of postage-stamps, is the mezzotint by Samuel Cousins, A.R.A., of the portrait of Queen Victoria painted by Alfred Edward Chalon, R.A., in 1837. The original picture was a present from the Queen to her mother, the Duchess of Kent, as a souvenir of Her Majesty's visit to the House of Lords to prorogue Parliament on July 17, 1837. According to The Athenæum, the original picture "may take its place as the portrait, whether in right of the likeness, which is faithful and characteristic, or in right of its artistic treatment." From the mezzotint Edward Henry Corbould, the son of the artist of the "Penny Black" of Great Britain, made a drawing in water colours, from which the engraver William Humphrys produced the fine miniature for the first stamps of New Zealand.

In a number of cases photographs have provided the subject for stamp vignettes, and here the collector is able, if he takes a little trouble, to procure copies for extra-illustrating his collection. The photograph of the Llandovery Falls in Jamaica, used on the picture stamp of that colony in 1900, was an unauthorised copy of one of a published series of local views; that of the Victoria Falls on the 1905 stamps of the British South Africa Company recently formed a frontispiece to The Stamp Lover (October, 1910). The subject of the quaint vignette on the British New Guinea and Papua stamps was engraved from a photograph taken by a naval officer, and I traced a copy to the collection of a returned missionary.

Bank-note and other engravings of a like character have provided copies for stamp pictures, and Lord Crawford has formed a truly magnificent historical collection of the United States stamps, in which his lordship, in the course of about forty volumes, traces each design to its inception, in some cases to the first rough pencil sketch. He endeavours to show every stage in the development of the stamp, and, as every philatelist should do, he follows the stamp through its period of currency, showing the different kinds of obliterations, the varying shades of successive printings, and where they exist re-issues, reprintings, and forgeries. His lordship's collections of Great Britain and of the Italian States are equally comprehensive, but that this manner of collecting is not entirely exclusive is evidenced by the number of collectors who have formed really worthy individual "association albums"—to borrow an expressive term—of the stamps of these same countries.

Proofs are comparatively easy of access, which, considering their relative scarcity, is surprising. The reason that they were neglected in the middle period of stamp-collecting was probably that the creation of a market for such items had led in some instances to an illegitimate supply by the employés of printing firms entrusted with the storage of Government dies. The misuse of stamp dies is rare now, most self-respecting Governments taking ample precautions not to admit of any improper use of their property. The opportunities for finds in the way of rare proofs are still plentiful. Stamp-collecting, though firmly established, is still young, and it is little over seventy years since the first adhesive postage-stamp was issued. A number of near descendants of the originators of the first postage-stamp are alive, and no doubt there are still treasures in the way of proofs among the little-valued waste of later stamp-engravers and designers. Shortly after the death of the engraver Herbert Bourne (1825-1907), I acquired practically the whole of his reliques in the way of proofs of stamp dies; but during his long life the engraver had done so many engravings that a little while prior to his death he had been burning the proofs he had saved to clear them out of the way. His son fortunately saved the thirty to forty items now in my collection, of which one of the most curious, if least in dimensions, is the extremely small head of King Carlos for the small opening in the frame of the picture stamps of Portuguese Nyassa. He appears to have done the die for the 1876 (June) issue of Spain, which stamps, printed in taille douce by Messrs. Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., are a flat contradiction of the statements of both the Somerset House authorities and the Crown Agents for the Colonies. Each of these departments has averred that the recess-plate printing offers more scope to the forger than our paltry surface-printing, yet Spain, prior to 1876, had to change her stamp issues practically every year owing to the prevalence of forgeries making heavy inroads on the Government revenues. Yet the forgeries were of surface-printed issues, and this first Spanish issue in taille-douce engraving, printed in London from the die of a London engraver, was never forged to defraud the Government, neither have the stamps been successfully imitated to deceive the collector.

As an instance of how little Mr. Bourne had regarded the proofs taken of his work at various stages, a very fine proof in the set obtained by me was the Queensland head die proved upon a large sheet of thick porous paper, the whole of which proof had been used as a convenient blotting-pad!

Proofs of the Mulready are not very difficult to obtain, even on India paper. There was in the Peacock papers a proof on India paper to which Rowland Hill had affixed his signature, the latter being added on a separate piece of writing-paper pasted over the India paper, which does not take writing.

There must be many engravers of stamp dies who have accumulated a stock of proof specimens of their work, and these are well worth looking out for. A particularly choice item—said to be one of three copies originally taken—is the engraver's proof of the first adhesive postage, head only, without "POSTAGE," and undenominated. Mrs. Haywood, a grand-daughter of Henry Corbould and daughter of Edward Henry, and who is still further associated with the stamp as the niece of Frederick Heath, the engraver, has one of the three, which is in itself a unique item, for it bears in the handwriting of Edward Henry Corbould the note:

"Engraver's Proof by Fredk. Heath after drawing by Henry Corbould, F.S.A."

To this undoubtedly important piece of evidence I give special prominence, as it should establish the association of Frederick Heath, rather than his father Charles, with the engraving of this stamp. To Charles it was popularly attributed at the time of the issue of the stamp, as the father's name had been generally associated with much of the work done under his supervision, but not necessarily by his own hand, by his many pupils and assistants.[12] Mrs. Haywood tells me that there has never been any doubt among the older members of the family—the Heaths and Corboulds having intermarried—that Frederick was the engraver and not Charles, and Edward Henry Corbould was himself a collaborator with Frederick Heath on the coin-shaped Five Shillings stamp of New South Wales, of which Mrs. Haywood treasures also an engraver's proof.

In the plate stage proofs are more common than die-proofs, but still in many cases they are scarce compared with the stamps; yet, by a strange inversion of scarcity value, one can obtain a magnificent proof of the famous "twelve pence" black stamp of Canada for fewer shillings than the stamp itself costs in pounds. The old-fashioned collector used to say he only wanted "stamps," and turned up his nose at a "proof," but the modern advanced school is changing all that. The old idea is the more ridiculous when one considers that the Connell essay of New Brunswick (it was never issued for postal use), if perforated and gummed, though still not an issued stamp, fetches £30, while an imperforate proof costs 20s. More absurd still is it where philatelists, in the desire to establish rariora, are inconsistent enough to deem an undoubted "proof" of Cape Colony, the celebrated 1d. red-brown triangular stamp on paper watermarked Crown over CC, as an issued stamp, and to pay a fabulous sum for the privilege of possessing it. The price—if its rarity be the token by which price may be gauged—was cheap enough; there are about ten copies known to collectors, all the specimens being unused, but by that same token we know that it was never used in the post nor issued to any post-office.

In regard to the actual stamps, there is much in the modern advanced collection which has not yet been fully appreciated even by the majority of collectors. Much less has it been grasped by the uninitiated vendor of "finds" among old letters and papers. It is but little known that a stamp in itself may be very common, but in a pair it may be of a high degree of value. This is putting it by extremes; but in the case of early imperforate stamps it is a fact that many of the first issues of Great Britain, her colonies, Holland, Belgium, German States, Uruguay, Chili, and other countries, the stamps are readily accessible as single copies, but pairs, much less blocks of four, are almost unheard-of rarities. Our own first stamp, the Penny Black, may cost 6d. to 1s. for a single used specimen, but a pair fetches 6s. to 7s. 6d., and a block of four would be worth 40s. to 50s. Alas! that many a one even among collectors has never yet realised that it is vandalism to take the scissors to a fine block of imperforates, simply because he is a collector of the one-stamp-of-a-kind order and has no use for a block.

Mr. Hugo Griebert of London, in a painstaking study of the "Diligencias" of Uruguay, says: "If blocks and pairs had been available it would have saved me years of work"; and again, "It is very unfortunate that blocks of the 'Diligencia' stamps are practically unknown. Not a single pair even of the 60 centavos or 1 real has come to my knowledge." Of the 80 centavos, there are a priceless block of fifteen and a block of four in a collection in the United States; there may be others to be found, and they would well repay the finding!

A block of eight of the Penny Black stamp (used) has fetched £15, and a block of sixteen would bring its owner at least £25—some thousands per cent. over the catalogue quotation for single copies.

Here, too, I may remark that with old used stamps, especially the imperforates, really fine copies cannot always be got at the prices indicated for them in the standard catalogues. The same applies to some extent to the unused copies also; but the beginner would be well advised to choose even his (apparently) common stamps with painstaking regard to their perfection of condition, and not to break up pairs or blocks of early imperforates, even though they may be inconvenient for insertion in his album. Fine copies are often sold by the smaller dealers and in the provinces and from private sources at prices based on the catalogue rates, and it is in these directions that even to-day, with many thousands of keen hunters, bargains are still to be had by the collector possessing an appreciative eye for the rarity of condition.

In the advanced collection of to-day there is no wavering over the used and the unused question. A lot of ink has been spilt in the controversies over the comparative interest, importance, or other claim of these two general conditions of postage-stamps. To-day both unused and used stamps are necessary to the study of stamps. A specialised collection containing only unused specimens would indeed be an "ill-roasted egg," and would fail to show the history of the stamps during their currency. The unused stamps show the pristine condition of the varying shades of successive printings; the used ones enable the collector to place those successive shades in their correct sequence, even to show for what purpose special printings were required. The most evidential items in a stamp collection are often the used copies which have been preserved on the entire original envelope, a fact which gives to the stamp used on the envelope a special value not always to be gauged by the catalogue quotation for an ordinary used copy. A Penny Black stamp of Great Britain should be worth at least two to three times "catalogue" if on the entire original; but if the original had been used on May 6, 1840 (the first day authorised for its use), the envelope with stamp would acquire an exceptional interest out of all proportion to "catalogue." In a specialised price list before me at this moment it is priced at £10, less 25 per cent., for the entire letter; one used on the following Sunday, May 10th, is priced at £15.[13] The Rev. G. C. B. Madden, of Armitage Bridge, had a copy on a letter of May 5th, but the stamp was not cancelled. The cover bears the stamp and the indication—

"Paid Penny Postage,
"Miss Jones,
"Addington Square,
"Camberwell."

and the enclosure is as follows:—

The cancellation may also be a factor in the relative scarcity of a used specimen. Coloured postmarks often have some special significance or may be merely accidental applications of the "chops" to the wrong inking pad. In the price list already mentioned I find the Penny Black quoted with the various coloured Maltese cross postmarks (ordinary used copies, not on "entire") as follows:—red 8d., black 9d., blue 60s., violet 40s., marone 4s., brown 5s., orange 7s. 6d., yellow 15s., vermilion 4s., carmine 2s. 6d.

Beyond the items the character of which I have indicated as desirable in the historical collection, there are others, which will readily suggest themselves to the collector who develops a keen enthusiasm for his specialité. Portraits of persons concerned in the production of the stamps and in their use often lend an enhanced interest to the collection as a whole, and sometimes maps are conveniently inserted in the album to show the geographical disposition of the places where stamps were issued or used. No one can expect those who have not studied the particular specialité to understand, without such a guide, the use of the "zemstvo" stamps of Russia, the courier stamps of Morocco, the Treaty-Port stamps of China, the provisionals of Mexico, or the Chilian stamps used in the Peruvian campaign of 1881-3.

In concluding this chapter I would allude to the interest and value of the collector's acquisition and preservation of modern documents. In the present day there are few events of importance that are not duly chronicled in the newspapers, and events of philatelic interest are largely recorded in the newspapers specially devoted to Philately, such as The Postage Stamp (weekly) in Britain and Mekeel's Weekly Stamp News in the United States. But with the enormous increase in bulk of newspaper records, they are becoming constantly more difficult of ready access for information on many points of even considerable importance. Further, the original Act, Decree, Postal Notice included within the album containing the stamps referred to leaves no room for any question of printer's errors, which may often crop up in newspaper reproductions, telegraphed perhaps in cipher from a distant colony. Among modern items added to my own collection I regard the card sent out by the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Ward, as Premier and Postmaster of New Zealand, on the establishment of Universal Penny Postage from that colony as of historic interest.

Another is a typewritten circular calling for designs from artists in competition for the new stamps of the Australian Commonwealth, and I was recently indebted to a correspondent in Pretoria for sending me the following notice, the historic interest in which needs no enlarging upon from me.

This class of document should be the more accessible to collectors from the little interest attached to them by the officials to whom they are generally sent. How little they appreciate their evidential value was brought home to me in a painful disappointment a year or so ago. Having been on the Continent for a few days, I returned to find among my correspondence an offer from an elderly man who had kept a post-office for a long period of years, and he had saved in a series of portfolios all the printed notices sent out from the General Post Office to postmasters from the 'fifties until the end of the nineteenth century. I had had some curiosities from this individual before, which led him to offer me these papers when he came upon them in a clearing-up mood. I was then engaged on a section of my history of the English stamps, and wrote off immediately upon my return home. To my utter dismay he replied that, not having heard from me, after a few days of waiting he had burnt the lot to get rid of them!

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VI

ON LIMITING
A COLLECTION

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CHAPTER VI

ON LIMITING A COLLECTION

To the child in stamp-collecting the boundless world is small; he will seek to bring into his net stamps from everywhere, postage and fiscal, exhibition labels, trading stamps, and all that has the shape or semblance of what he conceives to be subjects for his collecting. The collector of fuller experience knows that he must make a lesser world of his own. To attempt the whole wide world, even in what I may term "ordinary" postage-stamps, is a task which can scarcely attain even approximately to completion in these days, and the collector on such a scale would lose much of the advantage that comes of specialisation in particular directions. He would know little of the world's postage-stamps except in a superficial way, that would never bring him a bargain, and would probably make him a frequent victim of the unscrupulous.

It is well enough that the beginner should first flounder in a sea of stamps, to learn the first rudiments of the study. The specialist needs a general education as a groundwork in stamp-collecting, just as he does in any other pursuit. But it is almost unavoidable that the tendency must come to the advancing collector to reserve his strength in the direction which most attracts him, or for which he enjoys special advantages.

It is in the defining of these limitations that many collectors are constantly seeking for guidance. "Can you tell me a good country in which to specialise?" is an ever-recurring query. The answer should, of course, be extracted from the experience of the individual who sets the question. It may be laid down as a maxim that the general collector is not yet ripe for specialism until his general experience has turned his inclinations to some well-defined speciality. The trend of one's inclinations may be clearly reflected in the general collection, where it is seen that one country has been by some—possibly unconscious—bias developed beyond all others. Every stamp-lover knows that there are some stamps which exert over him personally a peculiar fascination. It may be due to some interest in the country of their issue, or to some special attractions in their style of production, and indeed to a variety of other causes.

It was a solitary—rather bilious-looking—stamp that first obsessed me, a good many years ago now. It was the 3 cents Sarawak, 1869, printed in brown on yellow paper, which was in the collection of my schooldays, and I had always wanted to make it the nucleus of a special collection. But, before the opportunity came for realising this ambition, a different interest had arisen in that adventure-story republic of Hayti, which led me first to try to specialise its stamps, which having done, after my notions of specialising at that period, the next start was made with my early friend the peculiar yellow-brown label which a Scottish firm lithographed for the Rajah of Sarawak. I suppose the spice of adventure suggested by both Hayti and Sarawak, and subsequently China and Abyssinia, was responsible for turning one's specialistic tendencies into definite channels.

But whatever the influence may be with some, the question is so constantly being put that it may be useful to outline some skeleton plans, which are all capable of providing good scope for the exercise of philatelic talent.

The close study of detail, and particularly the increasing interest taken by collectors in the manner of production, has led some students to devote themselves to the stamps produced by a particular firm of manufacturers. The finest collection on these lines would be that dealing with the stamps produced by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. during the period of, say, 1840-80. This would include the low-value English stamps of the line-engraved series, the early imperforate and perforated Ceylons, which in themselves afford ample scope for a big collection, those old favourites the triangular Capes, the majority of the stamps of the West Indian Islands, a few from Mauritius and Natal, the most interesting of the issues for New Zealand, and several of the Australian States, some of our North American possessions, with many others, not forgetting Chili's early issues. The stamps in such a collection would all be line-engraved.

Messrs. De La Rue & Co., the greatest stamp-printers in the world, would also provide an interesting sphere for special study, embracing line-engraved stamps from the old Perkins-Bacon plates, printed in a superb series of pigments, distinctive from those of the earlier printers, and also the long range of surface-printed stamps for which this firm has been noted.

There are other printers whose work could be dealt with by the collector in a like manner, and the would-be specialist on these lines has an opportunity of choosing a very small field or a very large one, the two I have expressly mentioned being capable of treatment on a very large scale indeed.

A more general limitation begins with political or geographical grouping. "Europeans" are in constant demand, as there are many collectors who confine themselves to the stamps of the European States as a group. It is, however, a very large group, and few could hope to successfully cope with the whole of it on anything approaching specialist lines. The Castle-Mann collection, sold in 1906 for nearly £30,000, was limited to European stamps. But Europe for the collector naturally subdivides into lesser groups, e.g., the German States, Italian States, Balkan States, &c., and these in their turn yield single countries, many of which will provide in themselves an abundance of work and study for the enthusiast.

The fashion which has for many years kept the stamps of the British Empire in constantly increasing demand is rather curious, in that what may be attributed—at least partly—to patriotism at home has yet prevailed in foreign countries, where British Colonials are collected even more than the national products. In the United States, for example, the collector has until quite lately somewhat neglected the grand series of beautifully engraved stamps of the Republic and has followed the crowd of collectors of British Colonials. This may be explained in some measure by the shrewdness of the American investor, whose confidence in the security of his money in good old British Colonial stamps is still unbounded. At the same time philatelic experience is that every country is gradually being taken by the students and getting its turn, so that as the United States has a growing family of its own, it is not unlikely that in due course we shall find more United States collectors working out their philatelic salvation on their own lines on a national, or American, basis. The American field is a particularly fine one and offers the most virgin philatelic soil. Nearly every other group has been pretty well collected and studied, though not exhaustively. The United States itself has had much attention, but Mexico and South and Central America, Cuba, Hayti, the Dominican Republic are comparatively fresh soil, and the student can invest at present prices with a good assurance that, as United States expansion and influence become more overwhelming in the Western Hemisphere, all these countries will enjoy increased popularity with the stamp-collector.

THE WEST COAST OF AFRICA.

THE LEEWARD ISLANDS.

The foregoing British Empire groups are given as examples of how this great division may be sub-divided.

Of the stamps of the great English-speaking Republic and the countries now or lately under her protection or looking to her for financial help groups may be formed:—

United States: The General Issues:—

Other suggested groupings may be taken from:—

The Pacific Islands.

Each of these, and the numerous other groupings, political, geographical, &c., which they will readily suggest to the reader, is capable of subdivision down to single countries or colonies, or into periods, just as others are capable of expansion if larger groups be desired.

In making his choice the collector will do well to give free scope to his tastes and inclinations, but he should not be disregardful of the financial side of the question, which is apt to confine the limitations of a speciality rather more closely than would his inclinations. It is well to realise from the start that some capital will be required to tackle a large group, and if the collector wants to specialise in the first issues of British Guiana, the "Missionaries" of Hawaii, the "Post Offices" and "Post Paids" of Mauritius, the "Gold Diggings" of New South Wales, the "circular" Moldavias, he will have to loosen wide the strings of a bounteously filled purse. Happily for the stamp collector, the interest and charm of his hobby is its broad adaptability to all requirements, and it cannot be gainsaid that the joys of the hunt for stamps are more real and stimulating to the collector of modest means, who personally knows and loves his stamps, than to the magnate who deputes the "collecting" to a secretary. In many instances, of course, the secretary is a desideratum; the vast collections of modern times practically necessitate an expert assistant, especially where the owner is a busy man; but in the really great collections of postage-stamps it is good to see the evidences of the personal attention and study of the owner. Philately is indeed fortunate in the number of wealthy stamp-lovers who build up monumental collections, at great personal labour and expense, and are ever ready to show portions of them at exhibitions and societies' meetings, and, indeed, to publish the results of their researches for the benefit of their fellow-students.

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