align="center">deep

The stamps were manufactured by Messrs. de la Rue & Co. by a double process of flat printing and of relief embossing, the flat printing being doubtless effected first and the embossing afterwards. This combination was unusually effective, and the finished stamps rank among the handsomest adhesive postage stamps known to collectors.

As embossing evenly over a large area presented considerable difficulties, the plates were made up of fifteen stamps only, in three horizontal rows of five stamps. The plates for both processes evidently fitted each other with precision, though in the printing occasionally the embossing is slightly out of register.

The paper is white wove and has no watermark, and the stamps were not perforated. There are two colours of the gum, one being the usual clear white: the other is a pale yellow colour, which may, however, be due to climatic influence, particularly as it is a noticeable feature of a number of the later issues.

The colour of the 4d. value varies in shade from a deep chocolate brown to brown and pale brown. The 6d. is pale to deep blue. There is a quite pale shade which is very rarely met with, most of the so-called "pale blue" specimens being an intermediate shade better described as "blue."

The sheets of both values shew one printer's guide dot in each side margin, opposite stamps No. 6 and 10 respectively (plate I).

Both values are known with the embossing shewing a distinct double impression.

There are some peculiarities in these stamps which, although their significance is uncertain, it may not be well to overlook.

Firstly, there frequently occurs throughout the embossed stamps of Gambia a small spot of colour on the back hair, which in later embossed stamps becomes a large spot, and even develops into a coloured indentation from the coloured circular ground.

In this issue the spot, when it occurs, is usually quite small, two copies of the 6d. examined shewing it somewhat enlarged.

Secondly, there are noticeable varieties of the pendant curl at the back. The normal design shews a fairly thick wavy curl with a hair branching out from it into the space between the curl and the neck. This sub-curl, as we may call it, is occasionally missing, broken, or as in No. 11 on the imperforate 6d. sheet (plate I), the curl and sub-curl have joined together, giving a very different appearance to the back hair. There are also varying lengths of the main curl.

In the sheet of the 6d. value the plates seem to have been slightly defective, and there is a gentle slope down from the centre to the outside stamp on each side (Nos. 1 and 5), the slope being more pronounced on No. 5, where the upper label containing the word Gambia is recognised as the variety with slanting label. The left side of stamp 5 is 22½mm. high, and the right side 22mm. That the peculiarity occurs reversed on stamp No. 1, though it is less pronounced, there can be no doubt. In later issues both stamps 1 and 5 shew the defect more prominently, as will be readily seen from an examination of plates I., X., and XI. Curiously enough, the fault is not confined to the two outside stamps, as is generally supposed. The trouble is in the entire top row being ½mm. taller than the normal stamps of rows 2 and 3, except the left and right sides respectively of the end stamps (Nos. 1 and 5). The middle stamp of the top row shews a further peculiarity in the shape of the base of the neck. (Compare plates I., X., XI., with XIV.)

Copies of both values exist overprinted specimen, and we have seen similar copies of all the regular issues of this Colony.

Chapter III.

Issue of 1874.

he introduction of watermarked paper for these stamps occurred in 1874, the paper being that familiar to collectors of British Colonial stamps as watermarked "Crown C.C." The paper was not readily adaptable for the small sheets of the Gambia stamps, and the method of cutting it to suitable sizes for these sheets has produced some varieties for the specialist.

Major Evans, writing in the Philatelic Record for January, 1883, says:—

"Most collectors are probably aware that the stamps of the British Colonies printed in England are, as a rule, in sheets of 240, divided into four panes of 60, each pane consisting of ten horizontal rows of six stamps. The Crown and C.C. watermarks are arranged in the same manner upon the sheet of paper; each pane is enclosed in a single-lined frame. Down the centre of the sheet is a blank space of about half an inch wide; across the centre is a wider space, watermarked with the words crown colonies, which are also repeated twice along each side of the sheet.

"Some of my readers may have noticed that the watermark is not always very clearly shown in the Gambia stamps. This is due partly to the fact of their being embossed, and partly to their being arranged in small blocks of fifteen—three horizontal rows of five—so that a row of five stamps is printed on a row of six watermarks, and in most cases a complete watermark is not found on any one of the stamps in a block. Very frequently the upper and lower blocks on a sheet encroach on the margins, and consequently some of the stamps show portions of the words crown colonies in watermark; and I have seen a block which had been printed in the centre of one side of a sheet, and the middle row of which was watermarked colonies, while the upper and lower rows bore the Crown and C.C. Recent printings of some of the values of Gambia show the blocks