Canada: Its Postage Stamps and Postal Stationery

by Clifton A. Howes

Taking these in sequence we reconstruct the watermark

The reader will please bear in mind, that when the stamps are viewed from the back, the letters read from right to left (at least when the sheets were placed normally in the press) as is usual with the Crown and CC, CA and other watermarks.

The letters are plain double lined capitals, except the third in the first line, C, which is more fancy, having a decided hook at the end of the lower curve and the upper curve ending in a point, instead of being cut off squarely, as in the case of the other letters. The

E and C are followed by periods 2½ mm. square. The initial capitals E, C and B are 13 mm. high, the other letters 12½ mm. The upper row is about 140 mm. long, the lower about 122 mm., and the distance between the rows 11½ mm. The watermark will thus fall on twelve stamps in each sheet of one hundred. But it cannot be argued from this that the stamps with watermark are only eight times as rare as those without, as we must take into consideration the proportionately large number of sheets on ordinary unwatermarked paper. The sheets were apparently placed on the press without much care, as the letters are frequently found reversed and inverted. I have not however found any placed vertically, nor have I found any other letters than the above....

As to the position of the watermark in the sheets, I believe it to be central. Its height, 37 mm., is great for a marginal watermark, and the fact that none of the letters have been found vertically, as is so frequently the case with marginal watermarks, is also in favor of a central location. We might also expect to find stamps on watermarked paper showing, as is not uncommon, the imprint of the contractors above or below, if the watermark were marginal. I, at least, have found none.

Mr. Luff considers that the watermarked stamps "are on an unofficial paper used temporarily," which is without doubt the case, at least as far as the temporary nature goes. He says further: "Compared with the large number without watermark, they are sufficiently scarce to indicate a provisional use of the paper and at the same time there are enough of them to show that a considerable number of sheets were printed."

For other varieties in this series we have the ½ cent on "bluish-white wove paper", listed by M. Moens in the sixth edition of his catalogue. Messrs. Corwin and King say this "corresponds to our grayish paper, the shade sometimes being quite intense." But they list the entire series on "thin, soft, grayish wove paper", as well as the ½ cent and 1 cent brown-red on "pelure grayish paper". It may be that imperfect wiping of the plates had left an extra grayish tint upon the paper of the specimen that Moens singled out for cataloguing, just as occurred in the case of most values of the Post Office Department stamps of the United States.

Messrs. Corwin and King[100] give an extremely lengthy reference list of this issue on no less than seventeen varieties of paper, with the remark that, "every variety we mention is distinct from any other", but, with Major Evans, we must remark that "we confess we are unable to follow our friend

Mr. King through all the intricacies of these varieties of paper ... but the differences are, perhaps, more real than is indicted in the descriptions." On inspection the "seventeen varieties" seem to combine themselves into I: laid paper, of thick and thin qualities; II: watermarked paper; III: yellowish wove paper, very thin to very thick; and IV: grayish wove paper, from pelure to very thick. In both of the wove papers are found the differences due to the process of manufacture, the even texture of the plain wove variety and the mottled texture of the so-called "wire-wove" variety.