STAMP GOSSIP.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13640, 9 July 1906, Page 6

STAMP GOSSIP.

In the course of some gossip on postage stamps in the Pall Mall Gazette, inspired by the International Philatelic Exhibition in London, Mr B. C. Hardy points out that British stamps bear no indication of nationality beyond the King's portrait. Great Britain, it is explained, was the first to adopt general prepaid penny postage, and designed her stamp with no regard for other countries. "A postage stamp was a British stamp, of course, and that was all there was to say about it. Mr Hardy notes that what are commonly regarded as the most valuable stamps are not by any means the most rare. Of the blue Mauritius, around which fabulous laics have been woven, some 20 specimens are said to exist, while of two stamps at [east, an early provisional stamp of, British Guiana, date 1856. and a surcharge* Italian stamp with a surcharge erroneoulsy inverted, only one copy of each has ever been discovered. As for designs in stamps he notes that oven Adam and Eve had been depicted. Map stamps seem the least popular, and perhaps with reason, since the Dominican Republic was nearly rushed into a war six years ago by issuing a set representing the island of Hayti with a. divisional line so badly indicated that Iho other half of the island regarded it as a symbol of intentional appropriation. In the gallery of rulers' portraits there is one notable— indeed inexplicable—gap; the Kaiser has never been represented on his stamps. Tragedy lurlts in the. death-mask of the murdered Alexander discovered in the handsome coronation stamp of King Peter of Servia, while the graceful French design of the Sower, sowing acainst the wind, raises a smile. Beforo the Sower came a lady holding a tablet inscribed "Droits do l'Homme." an ungallant limitation so offensive to the women of France that it was speedily withdrawn. Postal history, however, has probably nothing so (|uaint as the action of Hayti when a revolution compelled her President to fly, and threatened to render useless the new stamp adorned wiih his head. The Post Office decided that it was a pity to waste the stamp, and ordered them to be used upside down, any letter to which they were correctly attached to count as unpaid.