"I have had a very courteous reply from Mr. Jeffery, thanking me much for the letter, and saying he would lay it before the Committee at the next meeting.
"I forgot to mention one thing I said. That I knew that stamp collectors were not regarded with too much favour by the authorities, who were inclined to regard them as too curious and desiring to look into mysteries into which even angels were forbidden to look, but that they ought to take a very different view, for we were the greatest protectors against forgeries of stamps that they could have. Not one came out, but was immediately denounced in the publications circulating amongst collectors and the forger's trade stopped.
"I have written you a long lot of twaddle, but I have tried to sound the trumpet of the Philatelist—what Bunhill Row will think I do not know nor care; I said their manufacture was good—the best—but that the least said about their designs and colours the better. I also said that as to the lettering I agreed with you that it was practically useless if the stamp was properly obliterated and the saving slips done away with.
"The kind of stamp I suggested that they should have the design made of as a trial was the 2d. head turned the other way, when they could see the effect.
"Ever yours very affectionately,
"W. A. S. Westoby."
I am not entering upon any details of the Philbrick collection, for the most I could give would be a bald citation of an almost untold list of rarities. Imagine—if you can—a complete list of all known stamps up to 1880, imagine also some of the rarities not merely in duplicate or triplicate, but in the course of advanced plating of the settings (especially in British Guiana), and you may get some idea of what was in this great collection—and is still preserved in the collection of M. la Rénotière. His two used "Post Offices" of Mauritius were the first known copies of these rarities, and were at first considered to be an error of the inscription "Post Paid" of 1848, instead of a distinct issue of 1847. They came from the correspondence of a M. Borchard, whose widow found no fewer than thirteen of the twenty-five copies now known. The first pair was exchanged for a couple of "Montevideos," which had, in the eyes of the lady, so M. Moëns tells us, "the supreme advantage of having a place indicated for them in the Lallier album, where the 'Post Office,' like many other stamps, were not indicated." The two stamps were used on one envelope, and were postmarked together with one impression of the "Inland" handstamp, the 1d. specimen having the left upper corner defective. M. Albert Coutures, a youngster of twenty, secured the stamps in the "swap," and afterwards (October, 1865) parted with them to M. Moëns through the medium of a Bordeaux merchant, M. E. Gimet. The price Moëns paid must have been a mere trifle, as he parted with them to Mr. Philbrick on February 15, 1866, for a few pounds. The record of these stamps Nos. 1 and 2 in Moëns's "A History of the Twenty Known Specimens, &c.," is therefore briefly—
| Year. | Owner. |
| 1847 | Borchard. |
| 1864 (?) | Coutures. |
| 1865 | Gimet. |
| 1865 | Moëns. |
| 1866 | Philbrick. |
| 1882 | La Rénotière. |
To-day their "weight in gold" would, of course, represent but an infinitesimal fraction of their market value.