This is the first of a very interesting and important series of four provisional stamps that were made in St. Vincent, in 1880 and 1881, to supply a temporary want of certain values. From information received from Mr. Frank W. Griffith, late Acting Colonial Postmaster, and already published in the West Indian Catalogue of the London Society, we know the date of issue of the provisional One Penny was May, 1880, and that the number of stamps issued amounted to 1,800. Reference to Messrs. Perkins, Bacon and Co.’s list of consignments shows that the last printing of the black One Penny had been sent out in August, 1878, and it is evident that another supply of the value had already been ordered, but not received when this provisional was made, as the new One Penny, printed in grey-green, was only despatched from London on May 13th, 1880. The stamp used for surcharging was the dark blue-green Six Pence of Issue 7, perforated A, a remainder being in hand, probably from the last printing of March, 1875. In those days surcharged stamps, especially in British Colonies, were not so common as unfortunately they have subsequently become, and were much appreciated by philatelists, as may be seen by the tone of the writer who chronicled the provisional One Penny in the _Philatelic Record_ of July, 1880. “A very curious provisional stamp, forming a fit pendant to the makeshift 1d. employed in Barbadoes in 1878, has been used recently, but may by this time have become obsolete. The postal authorities of St. Vincent have treated their 6d. value in the same way as the Barbadians did their 5s. stamp—perforating it down the centre, and surcharging each side with 1d. in red, the numeral being 8 mm. in length.” The writer then goes on to say that the central line of perforation is clean cut, and gauges 12, which is quite correct, and records a fact worth bearing in mind when examining doubtful specimens, as the forgers have found the perforation much more difficult to imitate than the surcharge. Unfortunately our illustration of this stamp, No. 2, is not as clear as we could have wished, owing to the red and green colours not lending themselves readily to photography—so we give the measurements of the surcharge, which are as follows: Height of figure, 8¾ mm.; width of figure, 1½ mm.; length of foot of figure, 3½ mm.; height of “d,” 3 mm.; extreme width of “d,” 2 mm.; space between “d” and figure, 1½ mm.; space between figures on right and left halves of the same stamp, 8½ mm. The figure “1” has a straight serif. These details will help to protect collectors against at least the more ordinary forgeries, but the gauge of the perforation and its regular clean-cut circular holes are really the crucial tests, as some of the surcharges are heavily printed, and are difficult to measure with accuracy. A description of the forgeries known to us would be of little use. They all fail in the perforation,