Postal cards were first employed and issued in May, 1873-the denomination being one cent-and gained immediate popularity. A new design of card was adopted in August, 1875, being the one now in use. The number of cards issued during each year, since their adoption, is as follows:

Postage-stamps, stamped envelopes, and postal cards are manufactured for the Government by contract, and are issued under the supervision of an agent stationed at the place of manufacture, upon the daily orders of the Post-Office Department. These orders are made up of items covering the wants of different postmasters, as partially made known by their requisitions from time to time received, and the stamps, envelopes, or cards called for are sent directly from the agency to the offices named in the order. As the issue of these articles is at the foundation of nearly all the revenues of the Post-Office Department, great vigilance is exercised to prevent any postmaster from being supplied therewith to an extent greater than the actual needs of his office, or to an amount exceeding his bonded liability.

For the year 1852-the year immediately preceding the introduction of stamped envelopes-the number of postmasters' requisitions for stamps was 9,200. During the year ending June 30, 1876, the number of requisitions for stamps, stamped envelopes, and postal cards amounted, in round numbers, to 312,000.

X.-THE CENTENNIAL ENVELOPE MACHINE.

The embossing of postage-stamps, upon envelopes, was at first executed by means of ordinary printing presses of small size, fed by hand. Later, a self-feeding machine for embossing and printing the stamp, capable of making about 24,000 envelopes per day, was invented by Edward Allen, of Norwich, Conn. During the term of the contract with George H. Reay, of the city of New York, for furnishing the Post-Office Department with stamped envelopes, that contractor built and operated a number of folding and stamping machines with various novel devices. These machines were of two kinds. One, a single machine, was capable of manufacturing 20,000 envelopes per day; the other, a double machine, making two envelopes at a time, had a capacity of 30,000 per day.

These machines are now the property of the Plimpton Manufacturing Company, the present contractors, who have, however, never made use of them in the manufacture of Government stamped envelopes.

The Plimpton Company commenced the manufacture of stamped envelopes with the Allen machine, above mentioned, but the defectiveness of its operation soon attracted the attention of their foreman, Mr. Horace J. Wickham, and induced him to make a series of experiments, the result of which has been an ingenious and successful combination of all the processes hitherto in use into a single piece of mechanism, the "Centennial Envelope Machine." A machine of this kind was placed on exhibition in the United States Government building, by the PostOffice Department, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, upon which were printed, during that period, the Centennial stamped envelopes, sold at the Centennial branch post-office at Philadelphia, Pa.

The blank envelope-paper, first having been cut into the required form by a cutting-machine, and placed in proper position in a rack, exactly fitted to its shape, is taken up, piece by piece, by the picking-up mechanism at one end of the envelope-machine, gummed, embossed, printed, folded, dried, and turned out, at the opposite end, complete in packages of 25 envelopes each, ready for banding, at the rate of about 900 packages, or over 22,000 envelopes in ten hours.

The ends of the pickers, before descending to the pile of blank envelope forms, are, by two rollers previously supplied with mucilage and moving in opposite directions, coated with sufficient gum to enable them to raise the uppermost blank from the pile, as well as to gum the top flap and hold the envelope together; at the same time a valve gumtube, descending with the pickers to the end flap of the envelope, deposits thereon just the amount of gum required to hold that point. The blank is now quickly raised from the pile, and a pair of conveyors, gliding beneath, receive and bear it forward under the cross-bar which holds the male embossing die and the blanket for receiving the impression of the type. Here the blank remains long enough to receive the impression from the die and type, when it is passed to the folding box, folded, and dropped into the endless chain, finished.

The chain, filled with envelopes, passing over and around a fan which dries their gum, returns to the machine where each, as it arrives, is seized by a pair of steel fingers which draw it quickly aside and deposit in a box; each twenty-fifth envelope, being drawn half an inch beyond the line of its fellows, marks the completion of the package.

The envelopes, thus finished, dried, and counted into packages, are at once banded and boxed by an attendant, when they are ready for distribution.

XI.-POSTAL TOPOGRAPHY.

(See List of Exhibits, Division III.)

The first attempt, of which any record has been preserved, at delineating upon maps the post-routes of the territory now comprised within the limits of the United States was made by Hugh Finley, a post-office suveyor or special agent, who makes the following statement in his diary:

In December, 1772, the Right Honorable Francis Baron Despencer, and the right Honorable Frederic Thynne, His Majesty's Postmaster-General, appointed me to be surveyor of post-roads on the continent of North America. In the month of March following I was commanded to embark for New York, to be instructed in my duty as surveyor by the resident deputy general there.

I arrived at New York in April; Mr. Foxcraft was then in Virginia; without waiting his return I proceeded to Canada, in consequence of leave obtained in England, and arrived at Quebec on the last of the month.

. During my stay there I received orders from Mr. Foxcraft to hold myself in readiness to enter on service in September by beginning the survey in exploring the uninhabited country between the most southerly settlements on the river Chaudière, in Canada, and the most northerly habitations on the river Kennebec, in the government of Massachusetts Bay.

After detailing the difficulties encountered in obtaining the funds necessary for defraying the expenses of the expedition, Mr. Finley continues:

Four Indians, perfectly well acquainted with all the different passes, were deemed a number sufficient to conduct me and carry the necessary provisions. Four of the most expert were accordingly engaged, with an interpreter of the Abenaqui language, to meet me on the 15th of September, at the last settlement on the banks of the Chaudière, and from thence to conduct me by the shortest way to the nearest settlements on the river Kennebec, in New England.

Finley crossed the Saint Lawrence on the 13th of September, 1773, and met his guides at the last farm on the Chaudière, 52 miles south of Quebec, on the 15th, according to appointment. By canoe and land carriage they reached Falmouth, on Casco Bay, on the 30th. On the 2d of October he left Falmouth and surveyed the post-route by way of Portsmouth, Boston, Providence, New London, New Haven, to New York, thence to Norfolk, Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, Ga., closing the survey on the 26th of June, 1774. Mr. Finley's notes and sketches of the route surveyed by him are very minute in detail and furnished valuable information to the postal authorities of his time. His manuscript diary was on exhibition by the Post-Office Department, marked b, Division VII.

From such small beginnings, made more than a century ago, over comparatively restricted areas, the United States system of post-routes has expanded, until it now embraces the supply of the mails to 36,383 post-offices upon 9,003 routes, whose aggregate length is 281,798 miles, extending into every inhabited portion of forty-eight States and Territories, comprising within their limits an area of a little less than 4,000,000 square miles.

No correct knowledge of the location of a great number of post-offices scattered over a territory so vast could be attained except through the medium of a thorough system of maps, nor could any well-organized and economically-conducted scheme of mail supply be established and continuously operated, except through a knowledge attained from such maps, supplying, from their frequently-published editions, the everchanging topographic data of a rapidly-developing territory.

In the earlier days of the Republic, when the number of post-offices were few and confined mainly to the States bordering on the Atlantic coast, the knowledge of the topography of the country was necessarily very limited, for the surveys at that period had been few and imperfect. As settlements increased in number, and colonies of emigrants moved westward, the attention of the Department was directed to the necessity for more clearly-defined information relative to the location of distant communities, to the shortest, or most easily and rapidly traversed routes by which to reach them, and to the intervening obstacles to be overcome.

In 1839 a set of maps, elaborately engraved, were published under the auspices of the Department, and, for a short time, used with advantage in its offices; but no provision having been made to meet the constant alterations and additions necessary to make them keep pace with the frequent changes and rapid extensions of the service, they soon became obsolete, and were finally discarded. For many years thereafter the changes and extensions in the location of post-offices and post routes were based, for the most part, upon unofficial representations made to the Department, or upon references to a solitary copy, in manuscript, of each of such diagrams and maps as could then be produced by a single individual employed thereon, until the deficiencies in topographical information became so apparent, that the adoption of some system, thorough and correct in all its details, became a public necessity.

In 1866 was commenced the publication of a series of post-route maps, which, having been gradually extended, now embrace all the Northern and the greater part of the Middle and Southern States. These maps are at the present time eighteen in number, issued in forty-seven sheets. Several others as yet exist only in manuscript for want of the necessary appropriations to meet the expense of their speedy completion. They are produced partly by impressions from engraved copper plates, and partly from lithographic and photolithographic transfers. They embrace one or more States each, as their relative extent may allow, and vary in scale from a maximum of 6 miles to the inch (50160), for the older and more densely populated States, to 10, 16, and the minimum of 20 miles (1280) for those more sparsely settled. The lines for their construction are laid down on what is called "the polyconic projection,” as introduced for this continent, and systematically carried out by the United States Coast Survey. The primary geographical data have been obtained from the rigorously exact Government surveys of

the coast and the great northern lakes, filled in from the township surveys of the United States General Land Office, wherever these surveys have been made. For the older States, not covered by such surveys, the best local surveys, published or in manuscript, have been used. Only one State, Massachusetts, has yet executed its own survey. For the vast and imperfectly known Territories of the western interior, advantage has been taken of the reconnaissances and published maps of military and geological explorations.

The principal object of post-route maps being their technical use, all superfluous detail of topography, other than the principal rivers and creeks, has been studiously omitted. The names of places are those only at which there are post-offices; the county towns or court-houses being designated by a special bolder type; the names of the counties, with their boundaries, and also those of the States and Territories are shown, and the lines of the railroads with their corporate names. The frequency of the service is shown by a system of differently colored lines representing the routes: black indicating a service of six times a week, or oftener; blue, three times a week; orange, twice a week; and red, once a week. Special offices have their supply indicated by a broken line.

The topographical Bureau of the Post-Office Department employs constantly one superintendent and a corps of skilled clerks and draughtsmen upon new maps and new and corrected editions of those already published. It is in constant correspondence with survey offices, located in all parts of the country, and with persons capable of giving information in regard to surveys, roads, explorations, and matters of topographic interest, so that no change takes place that does not soon come to be known at this Bureau, and be noted upon the maps of the Department.

XII--MAIL EQUIPMENTS.

Specimens of the mail-bags, pouches, and sacks in present use by the Post-Office Department, were furnished for the exhibit of the PostOffice Department in the Government building by Mr. John Boyle of No. 203 Fulton street, New York; Mr. Polydore S. Thompson of No. 338 Broadway, New York, and Mr. John C. Fetterman of Albany, N. Y., contractors with the Government. These articles are of five classes.

CLASS A.-LEATHER MAIL-POUCHES.

(Five sizes.)

No. 1. Forty-eight inches in length, and 60 inches in circumference. No. 2. Forty-one inches in length, and 48 inches in circumference. No. 3. Thirty-six inches in length, and 42 inches in circumference.