Card of the Day - 2025-03-13

You may be wondering why we have this creature under garden wildlife, but some rural gardens do have them as visitors, and not all gardeners are happy The problem with them is their size, for they need a lot of leaves, fruit, and vegetables to slake their hunger, and their weight, whilst they are foraging, leads to much damage caused by their hooves. Growing thorny plants does not deter them, for they happily eat them too. Whilst they have even been known to kill trees by pulling the bark off with their teeth, which suggests that bark must be some kind of a delicacy, or dessert. There seems nothing you can buy to stop them coming in, only really tough fencing, and high ones, too, for they can jump six and a half feet in the air.

This card is the large-sized variation of a very familiar standard-sized one, which you will find as our Card of the Day for the 19th of February 2024 - and, pleasingly, the card we picked was Mr. Mole, the garden visitor with whom we started this week`s exploration.

Our original John Player Reference Book, published in 1950, lists the group as :

136. NATURE SERIES. Fronts in colour. Backs in blue, with descriptive text. Home issues.
A. 50 Small cards. Issued March 1909. Some colour varieties seen.
B. 12 Extra Large cards – Birds. Thick board. Issued October 1908.
C. 12 Extra Large cards – Animals. Thinner board. Issued October 1913.

There is a suggestion that another set was to be issued, but it was shelved by the First World War. I am not sure what it would have been, because the only creatures that are left are the amphibians, and they come under animals too. However now I have seen this larger sized card, I realise that it does not actually have a subtitle of "Animals", that was just added to distinguish the sets by the early compilers. So there could well have been a third series. This is also hinted at by the fact that in several sources the two larger sets are classed as "Birds" and "Mammals". But this far on, we will probably never know.

Seeing this size of cards has also supplied me with additional information, as they are branded for "Country Life" Cigarettes. At first this pack, and tin, was illustrated with a huntsman on a horse, but later it changed to three small silhouettes of rowing, cricketing, and cycling - none of which suggest the country to me, though at least they are kinder to nature. 

Our World Tobacco Issues Index lists the group as :

NATURE SERIES. Nd.... P72-41

• A. Small (50)
• B. Extra-large (20) –
      (1) Animals Nd. 1/10
      (2) Birds. Nd. 1/10

In other words, the original John Player book was wrong by saying the extra large sets were each of twelve cards. 

Now the large cards are numbered but it is a bit buried in the wreathing, especially as some of the cards have a tendency to be light of ink. We also know that all these pictures appear in the standard sized set, but not as the same numbers, so after each card in this list the small sized numbers appear in brackets.

The cards are : 

ANIMALS - or mammals :

1. The Roebuck (48)
2. The Badger (39)
3. The Hare (42)
4. The Ferret (33)
5. The Red Deer (26)
6. Chillingham Cattle (47)
7. The Fox (49)
8. The Squirrel (41)
9. The Stoat or Ermine (32)
10. The Weasel (37)

BIRDS :

1. The Red-Wing Parakeet (7)
2. The Military Macaw (9)
3. The Mallard (23)
4. The Common Sheld-Duck (24)
5. The Golden Pheasant (22)
6. The Many-Coloured Parakeet (3)
7. The King Parrot (1)
8. The Impeyan or Moonal Pheasant (19)
9. The Common Pheasant (17)
10. The Amherst Pheasant (13)

And many thanks to J.S. Cards who has a set of the birds in stock right now, from which I was able to extract the missing names for this list

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