[159] Dr Birkbeck Hill, on one occasion, told me that in the article on my father which he was asked to write for the D.N.B. he said of the adhesive stamp that its invention had been “wrongfully attributed to Mr James Chalmers”—words which nowhere appear in the article as it now stands. “The proprietors of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,'” wrote my brother in “The Origin of Postage Stamps,” pp. 14, 15 (note), “did not avail themselves of the offer I had made to place them in communication with those from whom official information could be best obtained—indeed, they appear to have made no application to the Post Office for information of any kind.... Meanwhile, as it afterwards turned out, they were abundantly supplied with Mr P. Chalmers' _ex parte_, and, to say the least, singularly inaccurate statements. With the editor of the 'Dictionary of National Biography' I had no communication whatever.” Is it after this careless fashion that much of our “island story” is compiled? If so, what wonder that long before the present day wise men should have declared that all history needed to be rewritten? [160] One of these claimants was a man connected with a well-known national museum; and his pretensions were to us a never-failing source of amusement. He was distinguished for two peculiarities: one being a passion for slaughtering the reputations of his friends; the other, the misappropriation to his own credit of all originality in any reforms or inventions projected by them. So far as I am aware, only one claimant was of my own sex; and she, at least, had the courage of her opinions, for, instead of biding her time till the postal reformer was no more, the poor insane creature wrote direct to him, saying she was the originator of the entire plan, and begging him to use his influence with the Government to obtain for her an adequate pension. The stories connected with some of the other claims are quite as curious as the foregoing.