NEW NATIONAL EMBLEMS 271 



over it is the significant legend, " One Hundred 

 Years." In other words, the stamp was issued 

 just a century after Captain Cook, on his first 

 voyage, discovered Botany Bay and first saw the 

 kangaroo. Western Australia takes for its emblem 

 the black swan. This bird is almost as typical of 

 the continent as is the emu. Some were brought 

 to Holland before the discoveries of Captain Cook ; 

 but the black swans once among the commonest of 

 Australian birds, and certainly the most remarkable 

 to European preconceptions of what was possible or 

 impossible in Nature used to be among the first 

 living things seen off the coast of the continent, 

 until the greedy sealers took to hunting the swans 

 for the sake of their down, and killed them by 

 tens of thousands on the sand-bars off the principal 

 harbours. 



Japan engraves the osprey on her stamps, and some- 

 times scenes from bird life, recalling the vignettes of 

 Bewick on a space the size of a sixpence. Among 

 the specimens before the writer are a stamp for fifteen 

 sen printed in mauve, and another labelled " Wuku " 

 Local Post. Both are engraved by native artists. 

 The first shows a long-tailed tit searching for food 

 in a pine branch, and the second a flight of wild- 

 fowl alighting on the water. 



But such subjects are too fine and curious for ordi- 

 nary Western fancy, which likes something more solid, 

 and occasionally is directly commercial. Thus New- 

 foundland in an issue of 1897, being probably either 

 anxious to attract visitors or proud of its forests, shows 



