With the change of contractors alterations took place in the paper, colours, and perforation of the stamps—printers’ accessories that naturally differ with each individual firm. At the time Messrs. De La Rue & Co. took over the contract they had, in the case of stamps of the size of the majority of those of St. Vincent, ceased using their well-known paper watermarked with a crown and “C.C.,” and had substituted in its place a paper with watermarks of a crown over the letters “C.A.”—these initials standing for “Crown Agents.” This paper is milled or surfaced, medium in thickness, and varies but slightly in both of these two respects. It was specially made for the electrotype plates used by Messrs. De La Rue & Co. in the surface-printing process they employ for most of the current British Colonial stamps. The entire sheet measures 21¼ inches in height by 11 inches in width, or 54 centimetres by 28 centimetres, approximately. In order to correspond with the stamps on these electrotype plates, the watermarks in the sheet are grouped in four panes of sixty, and those in each pane are arranged in ten horizontal rows of six, with a line in watermark enclosing each pane. The two upper panes are separated from the two lower ones by a space of an inch, and this interval is watermarked with the words “Crown Agents,” in a straight line in double-lined block capitals 12 mm. in height. The two panes on the right are separated from the two on the left by a narrow unwatermarked space of 6 mm. There is no marginal watermark at either the top or bottom of the sheet, but at each side the words “Crown Agents for the Colonies” are watermarked in a straight line of double-lined block capitals 7 mm. in height, the words on the left reading upwards, and those on the right reading downwards. From these particulars it will be seen how ill-adapted this paper is for plates of the size of those of the St. Vincent stamps. The consequence is that the watermarks, “Crown C.A.,” are irregularly distributed over the sheets of all the different values, never being in proper register with the stamps, but more so in the cases of the Halfpenny and the Five Shillings, on account of the sizes of these two values being so very different from that of the De La Rue stamps for which the watermarks are spaced.