together a fairly representative collection for what he ordinarily
spends at the tuck shop. Some educationists have advocated the making
and exhibiting of school collections of stamps as aids to study. Such
collections would certainly be much more profitably studied than most
of the maps and diagrams that nowadays cover the walls.

With few exceptions, every stamp has the name of the country, or
colony, of its issue on its face; and most colonial stamps bear some
family likeness to the stamps of the mother country. Our British
colonial stamps are distinguished by their Queen's heads; the stamps
of Portugal and its colonies by the portraits of the rulers of
Portugal; those of Germany by the German currency; those of France
mostly by French heraldic designs; those of Spain by the portraits of
the kings and queens of Spain. So that the postage stamp is a key to
much definite, valuable, and practical information.

[Illustration:]




[Illustration:]

VI.

Its Historical Finger Posts.


When considered from the historical point of view, postage stamps
attain their highest level of educational value. They are finger posts