Payment must invariably be made in advance in current funds of the United States. Mutilated currency, internal revenue and postage stamps, bank checks and drafts, will not be accepted, but will in all cases be returned to the sender. To insure greater certainty in the transmission, it is strongly urged that remittances be made either by money order or registered letter. Applicants will also include a sufficient amount for return postage and registry fee, it being desirable to send stamps by registered letter. Losses in the mails or by any mode of transmission must be at the risk of the purchaser. [Symbol: Right Index] Applications must be addressed to "The Third Assistant Postmaster General, Washington, D. C." Specimens of stamped envelopes will not be furnished in any case. E. W. BARBER, Third Assistant Postmaster General. Here is truly a pretty kettle of fish. The proceedings do not seem to have been reported by the Department, and there seems to have been no account rendered of this peculiar transaction of the Stamp Office. Doubtless the amounts received for these specimens and the number of them sold are blended in the accounts of the number of stamps sold and no loss accrued to the service. The public are not, however, informed of the extent of the transactions, and judging from the difficulty of finding these specimens in collections, the business was not large. There was no law preventing any one from purchasing either the newspaper or periodical stamps from the Post office, and at the time there was probably no regulation of the Department which prevented postmasters from selling them to all desirous of purchasing. Certainly some were sold to dealers and collectors. Hence the privilege of purchasing the current newspaper and periodical stamps _without gum_ for the same price that actual and complete copies could be obtained, particularly in view of the fact that the purchaser, unless a publisher or agent, could not use them when so purchased, even if he were willing to gum them himself, was probably not largely taken advantage of. The specimens when found can hardly be called reprints and cannot be distinguished from the ordinary stamps that have by some accident lost their gum. There is reason to believe that some of them have been adorned with this appendage by private parties, so that the presence of gum is no guarantee of genuineness. As, however, they are only partly finished stamps of the regular issue, no great harm is done if a specimen is treasured in a collection.