The most important change effected by the above quoted regulations was the reduction of domestic postage from five cents to three cents. It will be noted there are now no prepaid 5c or 17c rates and but one at 10c (on letters sent to British Columbia and Vancouver Island) consequently these denominations were dropped from the new series. On the other hand the 1/2c rate on transient newspapers, which had to be prepaid, the regular 3c letter rate, the 6c rate to the United States, and 15c for the new British Packet rate made necessary the issue of these four values in addition to the 1c, 2c, and 12-1/2c denominations, which were retained. All these stamps were printed by the line-engraved process, as in the case of the earlier issues, the sheets consisting of one hundred specimens arranged in ten horizontal rows of ten each. A new firm--the British American Bank Note Company, of Montreal and Ottawa--were entrusted with the manufacture of these stamps and, like their predecessors, they applied their imprint to the plates, so that it is shown four times on the margins of the sheets of the printed stamps. Mr. Howes describes the imprint as follows:-- The imprint appears in colorless capitals on a narrow strip of color with bossed ends, and reads BRITISH AMERICAN BANK NOTE CO., MONTREAL & OTTAWA. This strip is framed by a very thin parallel line, its entire width being but one millimeter, while its length is about 51 mm. It occurs but once on a side, being placed against the middle two stamps (numbers 5 and 6) of each row at a distance of about 3 mm. The inscription reads up on the left and down on the right, as before, but the bottom one is now upright, instead of being reversed. In the case of the half cent stamp at least, we find an additional marginal imprint over the second and third stamps of the top row. This consists of the words HALF CENT, in shaded Roman capitals 4 mm. high, the whole being about 40 mm. long. Presumably the same thing, varied for each denomination, occurs on other values of the series, as we find it does on the succeeding issue; but a strip from the top of a sheet of the 15 cent stamps proves that it was lacking on that value at least. The new stamps came into use on April 1st, 1868, and are all much alike in design. All values show a profile portrait of Queen Victoria, with head to right, on a background of horizontal lines within a circle, but the ornamentation and disposition of the inscriptions and numerals of value in the surrounding frame is different on each. The _Stamp Collector's Magazine_ for May, 1868, in announcing the issue, gives a good description which we cannot forbear quoting, viz:--