An elusive ram

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33066, 6 November 1972, Page 12

An elusive ram

Letters are passing from one side of the world to the other in an effort to identify or obtain a photograph of the ram embodied in the 1933 Falkland islands centenary stamp.

After the publication of an article in “The Press" about the search, more information has come to hand. Mr K. J. Smith, of Rapaki, has received a copy of the stamp from Major R. N. Spafford. of Yorkshire, who is writing a history of the Falklands Islands. Mr Smith said that it appeared that a magazine, with a photograph of the ram on its cover, had been left at the Falklands by a Mr Faithful, who had accompanied a shipment of sheep from New Zealand to the islands in 1926. He had taken a position as manager on an experimental farm, and returned to New Zealand in 1928. From visits to Lincoln College, Mr Smith has found an article, dated May 1, 1926, in the “New Zealand Farmer and Stock and Station Journal,” describing two shipments of sheep to the Falklands that year.

[Now he hopes to obtain ok (copies of “Dalgety's Woo (Digest,” for it was this fim which shipped the sheep t< the Falklands. [ As reported recently, Majo: Spafford believes that the ran was exported from Kent tc New Zealand.

“I’ve found plenty of photographs of Romney rams, but not the right one,” he said yesterday. “Tucked away in some farmhouse in Canterbury must be a copy of the magazine we are looking for.” The picture of the ram on the magazine was used by Mr G. Roberts, formerly of Port Stanley, in the Falklands, when he designed the islands’ centenary halfpenny stamp. It is not known on what magazine the ram’s photograph was used. Mr Smith has searched old copies of the “New Zealand Farmer and Stock and Station Journal” and the journal of the Department of Agriculture.