Queen Elizabeth II 25th Anniversary Coronation First Day Cover, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla postmarked on June 2, 1978.
St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla
This volcanic, oval-shaped island in the Leeward group was first settled in 1623 by the British, although the Carib Indians had been there before. The familiar Caribbean pattern of sugar and cotton plantations worked by African slaves was soon established, jointly with French settlers. Resistance played its relentless part in slavery's abolition, and even the burning alive and quartering of rebel slaves who had ensconsed themselves in a fort did nothing but speed the day. The population now is primarily of African descent, but much of the farmland is still in the form of sugar and cotton plantations owned by the European minority, many of whom do not live on the island.
The local beast in this Omnibus issue is the Pelican, which fishes mostly by ducking its head while surface swimming. Its close relatives play complementary ecological roles; the cormorants fish while swimming underwater, the boobies are expert dive bombers, and the frigates are adept pirates. However, feeding on inland and coastal waters, the pelicans accumulate insecticide residues. This causes their eggs to have shells so thin that they break before hatching. In direct consequence, pelicans along the Californian coast are now unable to breed.
The bird's symbolic use in Mediaeval church architecture derives from an Egyptian fable of a mother pelican feeding her children on her blood, just as Christianity has Christ redeeming his flock with his own blood.
The Falcon is associated with Edward I because of its heraldic use by two of his sons and the existence in 1359 of a Falcon King of Arms. The Falcon was symbolically identical with the eagle, carrier of both Indra's and Jupiter's thunderbolts, and their messages. Being also the natural enemy of the serpent, this made it appropriate for incorporation into the christian mythos, appearing as the church lectern eagle. As a symbol of power and fearlessness, it came to be the exclusive standard of Roman armies, and is still used as the national emblem of the United States. In this form it reflects the concept of man as master of his environment, from which the holistic concept of man as part of the environment is only now re-emerging. Modern ecology is one example of this view.
