ia,
Nepaul, Reunion, St. Lucia, San Marino, Sarawak, Seychelles, Sirmoor,
Somali Coast, Surinam, Tahiti, Tobago, or Tonga, and how many of all
these places, so familiar to the young stamp collector, will he
properly place? Not many; and the same question might probably be
asked of many an adult with even less satisfaction.

The average series of used stamps are now so cheap that a lad may get
together a fairly representative collection for what he ordinarily
spends at the tuck shop. Some educationists have advocated the making
and exhibiting of school collections of stamps as aids to study. Such
collections would certainly be much more profitably studied than most
of the maps and diagrams that nowadays cover the walls.

With few exceptions, every stamp has the name of the country, or
colony, of its issue on its face; and most colonial stamps bear some
family likeness to the stamps of the mother country. Our British
colonial stamps are distinguished by their Queen's heads; the stamps
of Portugal and its colonies by the portraits of the rulers of
Portugal; those of Germany by the German currency; those of France
mostly by French heraldic designs; those of Spain by the portraits of
the kings and queens of Spain. So that the postage stamp is a key to
much definite, valuable, and practical information.

[Illustration:]

[Illustration:]

VI.

Its Historical Finger Posts.

When considered from the historical point of view, postage stamps
attain their highest level of educational value. They are finger posts
to most of the great events that have made the history of nations
during the last fifty years. Here are a few out of many examples which
might be quoted.

The introduction of adhesive stamps for the prepayment of postage
found France a Republic. A provisional government had just been
established on the ruins of the monarchy which had been swept out of
existence in the revolution of 1848. As a consequence, the first
postage stamp issued by France, on New Year's Day of 1849, bore the
head of Ceres, emblematic of Liberty. Three years later Louis Napoleon
seized the post of power, and, as President of the Republic, his head
figures on a stamp issued in 1851, under the inscription "REPUB.
FRANC." Two years later the Empire was re-established, and the words
"REPUB. FRANC." were changed to "EMPIRE FRANC." over the same head. In
1863 the customary laurel wreath, to indicate the first victories of
the reign, won