Unused. Used. s. d. s. d. =78= | 4d., canary-yellow | 0 8 | 0 8 | | | =79= | “Five Pence,” in black, on 6d., dull carmine | 1 0 | 1 0 | | | =80= | “Five Pence” ” ” carmine-brown | 1 0 | 1 0 NOTES. SECTION I. This section of the Reference List comprises all issues printed and perforated by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., London; that is, from the first issue of 1861 until the end of 1881, when the last stamps printed by this firm made their appearance. For about half this time unwatermarked paper was used, and afterwards each stamp was watermarked with a star. We shall consider these two papers, as well as their minor varieties, in later notes, but we must here give a detailed description of the perforations, three simple and one compound, found in the stamps included in Section I. During all this time only two perforating machines were employed, except in 1862, when for one particular stamp, namely, the yellow-green Six Pence, another machine was used. With this exception all the stamps printed by Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. were perforated by one or the other of the two first-mentioned machines, and it is of these two that we now propose to treat, leaving the description of the perforation of the 1862 Six Pence to the note on Issue 2, as it is altogether an exceptional stamp, and need not be taken into account just at present. The two machines we have now to consider were both single-line, or guillotine ones; that is, they made but one line of perforation at a single stroke. These two machines, as well as the perforations made by them, we have elected to call “A” and “B,” so that in the Reference List the perforations of the stamps are called “A” or “B,” or “B × A,” instead of being, as is usual in philatelic writings, labelled with a number denoting the number of holes found in a space of 2 centimetres. Further on we shall endeavour to make plain and justify our reasons for so doing. The method now in use for describing the perforations of stamps succeeded a previous clumsy and inaccurate system of counting the actual number of notches along the top or bottom of a stamp, as well as those down one side, so that the perforation of each stamp was denoted by two numbers. These numbers depended as much on the size of the stamp as on the spacing of the holes, and we suppose the system proved to be unworkable, as we do not think it was ever adopted in a catalogue, although it was certainly the first manner in which philatelic writers ever specified differences of perforation. It was soon abandoned for the well-known method in general use at the present day.