Here we gave you the largest problem for our native red squirrels, the Scots Greys. They are not only larger, but tougher, and they colonise any area which formerly had the red squirrel in it with ease. And they also have squirrelpox, which they are immune to but the greys are not. And this all came about in 1876, when a Victorian banker Thomas V. Brocklehurst released his pet North American Eastern Grey squirrels into Henbury Park, near Macclesfield in Cheshire. At which point we must mention that his relative, Sir Henry C. Brocklehurst, was responsible for the release of several red-necked wallabies into Staffordshire during the mid-1930s.
Here we have a very curious set, for I wonder how many of you already realised that it is actually the same as the John Player one, just issued twenty-five years later. This fact first appears in our reference book RB.21, to the issues of the British American Tobacco Company, under the section devoted to John Player - and reads :
- 217-165. REGIMENTAL UNIFORMS. The first series of 50 small size cards was issued as follows.
A. Player Home issue. Back in blue
B. Player Home issue. Back in brown
C. Anonymous Issue
D. U.T.C. issue. Back in grey, inscribed at base "For an album send 6d. to P.O. Box 1006, Cape Town." The U.T.C. name does not appear on the cards.
Strangely, our original John Player reference book, RB.17, issued in 1950, only mentions these as a "similar series, anonymous cards, issued in South Africa." However, if we look again at the listing in that B.A.T. booklet, it also says that the name of U.T.C. does not appear on the cards, so it is not at all hard to see how the link never happened at the time.
Now by the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index the set is in place with the other United Tobacco Companies issues, and the entry reads :
- REGIMENTAL UNIFORMS. Sm. 68 x 36. Nd. (50). Back inscribed (a) "Box 78" (b) "Box 1006", without firm`s name. See X21/217-165.D ... U14-29
That X21 reference is in the handbook, and it is rather confusing as it relates to the U.T.C. printing of another John Player set, "Riders of the World", but I suppose what they are confirming is that both these sets are found with either (a) "Box 78" or (b) "Box 1006".
That seems to settle the matter, but when the World Tobacco Issues Index was updated in the year 2000, all is altered, and that reads as follows :
- REGIMENTAL UNIFORMS. Sm. 68 x 36. Nd. (50). Back inscribed "Box 1006", without firm`s name. See RB.21/217-165.D ... U560-540
So I am rather baffled as to where the "Box 78" has gone!