Page:British India Adhesive Stamps Surcharged for Native States.djvu/10

 PREFACE.

THIS little book is the result of much hard work. When I first began, in the January 1897 No. of the Philatelic Journal of India to make "the first attempts to put together materials for an illustrated handbook" on the adhesive stamps of British India surcharged for use in certain Native States I hardly realised what a task I was undertaking. The notes hitherto published have necessarily been incomplete, and further enquiries (rendered possible by their publication) have revealed several inaccuracies. These I have now corrected, and believe that this first instalment of the promised handbook is both accurate and fairly complete.

I ought, perhaps, to add a few words of explanation as to the various stamps shown in the Reference Lists as found with "errors." I have not seen all of them myself and in some cases it appears to be very doubtful whether owing to the small number ever in existence, and the period that has elapsed since their issue, they will ever be seen. To take an instance, however, if I found that the 1, 2, 4 and 8 annas values of one of these States contained a particular error, and knew that when all these values were surcharged, the anna and 12 annas values were also surcharged, it became plain that the same error must have occurred in the two latter denominations as well. Matters became more complicated when there had been more than one printing in which these values occurred simultaneously, but in cases I have usually been able, from extraneous e T