PHILATELY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2511, 30 April 1902, Page 56

PHILATELY.

By Pelure.

Enelitnd (writes Dr Richardson, in a Yorkshire paper) has been the happy ration without a history. For more than 60 years our stamps bore the image of our Ute gracious Queen. Our European possession.* are few. Malta has been ouis sinco 1800. Gibraltar since 1704. In 1890 we exchanged Heligoland with Germany for jZanzibar. The reprint's of the Heligoland stamps in red, green, and white are now a glut in the market. Scr.rca and interesting stamps are those of the lonian Islands rtvitb. Greek inscription round Victoria's head,. The islands were given to Greece in (L 862. The hurried acquisition of Cyprus 8n 1878 is indicated by the use of surcharged English stamps. ' The oldest French stamps show the head 61 Liberty and superscription. " Repub. JFranc." these are relics of the Second Republic, 1848-53. A somewhat rarer stamp (has the same "Repub. Franc.,"' but with the head of Louis Napoleon! This was issued while he was President of the Re- | public. A little later the legend was altered , to "Empire Franc." Another issue added a • (aurel wreath, making one suspect a -spirited , foreign policy. That policy led to Sedan ; and in 1870 "a republic was again declared, and Liberty re-appeared on the stamps. (There are few pages of history better iUustrated by stamps than the dying reverberations of the Great Revolution. ,; The troubled times of 1866-74 left their Jtraces on the stamps of Spain. Isabella, j queen for 35 years, yielded to Liberty ; and lEurope saw the strange spectacle of a republic advertising for a king! The rejection of a French prince and the favour 'shown to a Hahenzollern candidate gave loffence to France, and occasioned the Franco-German war. At last —in 1880 — Amadeo, son of the King of Italy, took ]the throne, but was not strong enough to hold it. So Liberty reigned in his stead. 1873-75, until Alfonso, son of Isabella, succeeded. He waa young indeed, but that *ras a fault easy to grow out of. Through the years 1872-76 the Cavli«t Government held the provinces of Navarre, and Biscay, their stamps showing the head of Don Carlos. , Germany was once complied to a menagerie, the various State* like wild beasts glaring through the bars. Illustrating the growth of Prussia, and the rise of the pieBent Empire of Germany, we find that Schleswig, Holstein, Schluswig-Holstein, Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, Mecklen-fcurg-Strelitz, and the free cities, Hamburg, liubeek, Bremen, all had separate stamps foefore Prussia absorbed them. Of these either oiiginals, re-prints, or forgeries can be obtained. Bergedorf had for emblem on its stamp half the Hamburg Castle and ihalf the Lubeck Eagle, because it was the joint property of the two cities. The growth of United Italy is well shown. There are obsolete stamps of (i) Sardinia (=Sardinia+ Piedmont-f Savoy-f Nice with embossed head of Victor Emmanuel ; of the thiee duchies (ii) Tuscanv, (iii) Modena. and (iv) Parma ; of (v) Sicily with the head of Ferdinand, and 'vi) Naples, his othei piovince. with its miious arms. In J859, Austria was driven out of Lombard}', nnd the peoples of the duchies and legations voted for union with Sardinia. So in spite Df anathemas the Pope lost (vh) Romagna. 'After Garibaldi's expedition (1860) appeared first the stamps of the Provisional Government, and then the new st imps of the Neapolitan Provinces with head of Victor Emmanuel, not unlike tlu>-.e of Sardinia, but in.sciibed ir Giiina. In 1861 Vie tor Emmanuel was crowned K,ng of Italy in Turin, and «oon appeared the new «ttunp pf Itflly. now a nation, no longer a nuie * geographical expre*- ion." In 1866. Au^fina ceded (vmj) Venctu: ti. Italy thmu^li iKapoleoii The ««tamp< nf Uip (i.\) KtnU lof the C'niuh. with the ciot-eil Lev- <>" Heaven •"'<! He'l. wcie m ix til' 18.0. nheu ilie itai-.-n t'oojc eivu-'-ed i\;.me The K'.stern Qi"-M;on ■•> Mill involved For if- l.'i^toiv wp vmi«-t look b ■< k !'> "1455. irlipn Co'i-'.tWi'ii'Oj/f- v .in : kt-n b- ;h ■ 3'urk>- Tin I<-_c.n •.< v. a-l»j l•• tV <'c t,i;, r ''m k.-'i: p» l. ;'v ('if 1 ' i\> "f intern. i- ..niiun n .-n. 11* - \ •)":;■ "' I"r;tuii:.fc.->. .ja;, «'i.il li-jiyioii-, and ilia •Lcilou-siej. oi otiici i*Ukv]&iM. JiilMiib. iiii

Star and Crescent now floats over «a smaller part of the Balkan Peninsula than it used to ; and in contrast to Italy we see in Turkey the decay of empire. The people of Montenegro boast that they weie never in bondage. Greece has been independent since 1829 : and Mercury, once telegraph boy to the Gods on Olympus, is now in the employ of that Government. In 1861 Roumania was foimed by the union of Moldavia and Wallachia. Servia was independent in 1862. The Russo-Turkish war of 1877 was followed by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. Bulgaria got Home Rule, and stamps with rampant lion. The Austrian arms appeared on the stamps of Bosnia. The Washington correspondent of the Metropolitan Philatelist (U.S.A.), in the issue of December 7. says : " One cent letter postage may be a reality within a few years, judging from the tenor of the report of the Postma&ter-general. ... It appears that at the present time the revenue derived from the transports tion of letter mails is being utilised to make up the deficit caused by transporting other classes of mail, notably periodicals. I believe we will have 1 cent letter postage within thiee years." The "M. Ph. Z." says the German Reichspost dealt iv 1901 with 1,847,000,000 letters, and 1.020,000,000 postcards. There are 221,306 officials employed. In connection with the number of postcards handled it may be well to quote from the Bay State Philatelist: — The picture postcard craze must be at high tide in Germany. Lately the officials for a week kept tally of the number posted. According to the report there' wa& a daily average of 1,446,938 pictorial cards posted, the postage amounting to about £4312 per day. In Corea the postal administration is in «a bad way. A deficit of 137.576d0l crept up in 1890, although the business done in this year cannot be called bad for that country. But the staff is excessively large and costly. The 360 post offices with 712 officials in 1900 handled 1,308,607 sendings ; 26,559 were sent taand 29,109 received from foreign countries. The latest Year Book of the Societe Francaise de Timbrologie, Paris, contains, together with other interesting articles, a philatelic statistic of 1900, by Rene Adam. Excluding minor varieties, there were 945 postage stamps issued in 1900, as against 635 in 1899 and 750 in 1898. If we include the colonies with each mother country we get the following comparative table :

NEW ISSUES Austria. — A new value 35 liellei green has. been issued. King'b Head Stamp — The aii is full of rumours ot contemplated new i^bue 1 - by vaiiou> Bntish colonies of Kings he.td Starr. l'liu Litest aii» (I.irnbiu, Cayn.an „ ,'! d--, Frdiei, Mn'li, and la^t. but not lea&t. Uu- Au < -tr.t! ; iii S^ue-. A*- it i^ extremely nnji'ob.ihle tlu.L (\>nnnom\<.;dth stamps will be issued for anollx-j- thrto "cars, there may be a good deal cv tiuth in the Littei rumour.