Bug Stamps Around the World

Almost every country in the world has a postal system for delivering its mail. They also produce stamps that represent important things in their lives. People all over the world like to collect the stamps that various countries produce. It’s fun, and it helps collectors learn about other cultures. Stamp collectors are called philatelists and the agencies in countries that sell stamps to collectors are called philatelic agencies.

Philatelics is divided into many categories, and people often just collect certain categories. There is a whole category about bugs on stamps, and almost every country has stamps with pictures of their native bugs on them.

Charles Darwin spent five years traveling around the world learning about different types of plants and animals. As noted in the article, Scientists Are People Too, on page 21, Darwin sailed on the HMS Beagle in 1831 and returned in 1836. He kept notebooks full of new information about the plants and animals he found along the way. You can trace Charles Darwin’s journey around the world by using a world map. You may need an atlas or a wall map because you need to be able to read the names of places. Start in England and find each place he stopped. You can find free maps to download and trace Darwin’s journey on the Internet at: http:// www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/world.html. If you really want a research challenge, go to the Internet or the library to find out what he found at each stop.

1. December 27, 1831 – Darwin leaves Plymouth, England, aboard HMS Beagle. 2. Passes through the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands 3. Visits the Island of Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands (first curious discovery) 4. Sailed toward Brazil, crossed the equator 5. Salvador, Brazil (beautiful beyond his wildest dreams) 6. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (collected specimens of plants and animals) 7. Montevideo, Uruguay 8. Patagonia (collected fossils of armadillo shell, ground sloths and giant teeth) 9. Around Cape Horn to Pacific Ocean(delayed by violent storms) 10. Chiloe Island, Chile 11. Valparaiso, Chile (explored in the Andes Mountains) 12. Lima, Peru 13. Galapagos Archipelago (rode on the back of giant tortoises) 14. Tahiti, 3,200 miles into the Pacific from the Galapagos Islands 15. New Zealand