Card of the Day - 2023-07-24

Wills Australian Wildflowers
W. D. & H. O. Wills [tobacco : UK] "Australian Wild Flowers" (1913) : W675-339.A : W62-215.A.a : W/45.A : RB.21/200-45

Our third clue followed the above theme, and, buried rather deeply in the text, is the word "whorl", which is like a circle with interior spiralling, or even whirling, lines, either in one, or more directions. 

The whorl pattern appears on just over twenty-five per cent of fingers.

The other main feature on a fingerprint, by the way, is "arch", which is sometimes broken into a second category, "tented arches". These are really scarce, and even considered together there are less than five per cent of us who have them on our fingers. Yet the simple arch is indeed simple, they just curve gently off straight-ish line. The tented arches are a bit more complex though, raising steeply off the line, and they do look very much like a tent in the middle of a field, with a prominent top, as you see when the canvas sides slope down to the ground and away from the pole. 

Our Wills Reference Book part III lists this as : 

45.  50. AUSTRALIAN WILD FLOWERS. Fronts lithographed in colour ; backs with descriptive text. Australian Issues, 1913 ;-
A. Backs in grey brown, with advertisement for "Wills`s Specialities."
B. Backs in green, with advertisement for "Wills`s Specialities."
C. Backs in grey brown, with advertisement for "Wills`s Havelock."

There seems to have been no month of issue recorded for this set, for it does not appear in the list of such that was added to the five Wills reference books when they were reprinted together under one hard cover. 

Our World Tobacco Issues Index adds the size 67-68 x 36 m/m, and also that the sets were issued through British American Tobacco. It lists the set as :

AUSTRALIAN WILD FLOWERS. Sm. Nd. (50). See W/45 and RB.21/200-45 
A) "Wills`s Specialities" back in (a) grey-brown (b) green
B) "Havelock" back

This information is virtually identical in the updated version of the World Tobacco Issues Index but it does add something very intriguing, which I will have to research, this being 

A. "Wills`s Specialities" back in grey-brown, sometimes climatically affected to green.