The prehistoric times of Philately may be said to have ceased in 1863, when the publication of the _Stamp Collector’s Magazine_ and the _Timbre-Poste_ commenced. The few and meagre catalogues which preceded them in 1862—such as those of Mount Brown and Dr. Gray in England, Moens in Belgium, and Potiquet in France—can only be looked upon as archaic productions, interesting certainly because of their associations, but of no appreciable utility now-a-days to the student of stamps. It is, however, worthy of remark that the difference between imperforate and perforated stamps was then recognized, as they are distinguished from each other in the catalogues both of Moens and Potiquet; this shows that even at that early date the true philatelic spirit was already abroad. When studying countries of which the philatelic histories begin prior to 1862 or 1863, we are dependent entirely on public notices emanating from postal authorities, official records, and information derived from the books of firms who manufactured the stamps, or supplied the plates, paper &c. for printing them, sources of knowledge not always easy of access. Luckily for our present purpose, seeing that postage stamps were not adopted in St. Vincent until 1861, we are not so dependent on these official or commercial records, having a great number of philatelic works, such as catalogues and periodicals, to rely upon, all of which we have carefully searched and collated; at the same time we have received great assistance from Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., Limited, the printers of the stamps included under the head of Section I. This Company have been good enough to furnish us with a complete list of every stamp sent out by them to the Island, a copy of which we give in Appendix D, and we acknowledge with thanks our indebtedness to the Managing Director and Secretary, for the valuable material they have so considerately placed at our disposal, which has enabled us to satisfactorily clear up several points that before were more or less obscure. It will also be seen that the list helps in no small degree to form what we hope may be considered a fairly complete history of the stamps of this Island.