. St. Nicholas [serial]. the head of KingGeorge. The design somewhat resembles the old design of thefirst stamp is-sued—the pen-ny black ofGreat set is neatin design, andthe colors arevery pretty. Ap-parently the au-thorities expect a large sale for them among collec-tors ; we can think of no other reason for the widerange of values. There is no one penny in the set,however. The colors and values are as follows:d., green; lY^, gray; 2, purple; 2Y2, blue; 3,brown-violet; 4, orange; 45/^, green; 6, rose-car-mine; tY2< red-brown; 9, light olive-green; one shil-ling, vermilion. Ther
. St. Nicholas [serial]. the head of KingGeorge. The design somewhat resembles the old design of thefirst stamp is-sued—the pen-ny black ofGreat set is neatin design, andthe colors arevery pretty. Ap-parently the au-thorities expect a large sale for them among collec-tors ; we can think of no other reason for the widerange of values. There is no one penny in the set,however. The colors and values are as follows:d., green; lY^, gray; 2, purple; 2Y2, blue; 3,brown-violet; 4, orange; 45/^, green; 6, rose-car-mine; tY2< red-brown; 9, light olive-green; one shil-ling, vermilion. There also comes from New Zealanda half-penny, surcharged with two stars, and thewords War Stamp. This probably is an addi-tional tax upon letters, similar to the tax stamp inCanada. We illustrate the half-penny, both withand without the surcharge. We also illustrate threestamps from a new series for Mexico. The generaldesign is similar in all the stamps, but the centraldesigns, or portraits, vary. The illustrations of the. 2, 3, and 4 centavos, at the head of this page, give agood idea of the different stamps. THE TOUGHRA RECENTLY one of the readers of Stamp Pagesent us a Turkish stamp, similar to the onewhich we illustrate this month (see the right-handstamp of our heading), and asked the meaning of thecurious symbol in the center. This intricate andmysterious device is the toughra, or signature ofthe sultan. It is said to owe its origin to SultanMurad I, who was unable to write his name. Wequote from an article in What Philately Teaches,as follows: He [Murad I] signed imperial decreesby dipping his fingers in ink and placing them on thedocuments with three fingers close together and thelittle finger and thumb extended. In the course oftime this was adopted, and, so to speak, consecrated,as the signature of the sultan. It was also elabor-ated and arranged to form a written phrase, whilepreserving in a general way its original form. Thetoughra contains certain characters which a
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Keywords: ., boo, bookdecade1870, bookidstnicholasserial4311dodg, bookyear1873
