Generally, however, it is the stamp collection itself that is enriched by a variety of evidential matter and extensive notes by the owner. I have traced with fair success in my Great Britain collection the early history of the Post Office in this country, and have been fortunate enough to secure several of those _raræ aves_ among historic documents, the proclamations relating to the post. Lord Crawford has the finest set of these in any private collection, and he has given a list of them in the catalogue of the philatelic section of the _Bibliotheca Lindesiana_, with details of the location of all known copies. Acts of Parliament are not always convenient for inclusion with the stamp collection, but those relating to the issuance of stamps should be included where possible. The original of the "pretended Act" of the Commonwealth, to which I have already alluded, was a bookstall-bargain, costing a few shillings. The Uniform Penny Postage Acts of 1839 and 1840 should be included in the "association collection" of the stamps of Great Britain. My copy of the former is an original, but the 1840 one is a reprint. The years 1837-39 are of great importance in the history of postage-stamps; this was the first period of the essays and proposals for the system, to the advocacy of which Rowland Hill devoted himself with such tenacity of purpose. The published proposals, samples of the printed envelopes and covers of which were included in the "Ninth Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Management of the Post Office" (1837), and in Mr. Ashurst's "Facts and Reasons in support of Mr. Rowland Hill's Plan," are accessible to the specialist, and are the natural _priores_ of the Mulready envelopes and covers. Not so accessible are the proposals of Forrester, Cheverton, Dickinson, and the minor lights who sought to provide the Treasury with the key to success in the adoption of prepayment. My "Forrester" is a perfect copy which came from the sale of the Philbrick library, where it had been overlooked and classed among some more ponderous but less treasured productions. The Cheverton papers and the metal dies intended for striking the impressions of his proposed labels remain in the possession of the inventor's relative, Miss Eliza Cooper, though casts have been made of the die for the collections of his Majesty the King, Lord Crawford, the British Museum, and the Royal Society. Mr. Lewis Evans, the grandson of the late Mr. John Dickinson, the great paper manufacturer--a contemporary of Fourdrinier and no mean rival of that genius--has a family treasure-store in the Dickinson correspondence with Rowland, Ormond, and Edwin Hill, and Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and particularly in a fine series of the patterns drawn up by Ormond Hill for the envelopes printed on Dickinson "thread" paper. Samples of the actual thread-papers (unprinted) as used for the Mulready and the