the "Taft Agreement". This agreement was brought about as a result of an investigation into the protests made by Panama officials and business. These issues were in use from July 18 to December 11, 1904. Only a small percentage were actually sold, with the greater bulk of them destroyed on January 2–3, 1906, supervised by the Director of Posts, Tom M. Cooke. Two years after they were issued they were withdrawn from sale with the remainders of all values destroyed on January 2 and 3, 1906. Their withdrawal was arranged through an agreement between the Secretary of War, William Taft, and the Government of the Republic of Panama. The arrangement between the two governments resulted in many varieties for two reasons: One was due to the fact that the Canal Zone surcharge was printed on small quantities of stamps, with copper faced type which was reset at least five times for some of the values. The other was because many of the stamps used were those which had already been surcharged by the Panama authorities, and which were again surcharged with the Canal Zone overprinting. The last of these overprints were issued in 1939. 1904 issues, third series In 1904, the Taft agreement required that Canal Zone stamps be produced by overprinting Panama stamps, and that 40% of their face value was to be paid to Panama. Somewhat similar to the map design of the first issues of 1904, the Third Series of Canal Zone stamps went on sale December 12, 1904. This issue was first overprinted by Mr. C. Bertoncini who was the Chief of the Canal Zone Division of Map Making, and then transferred to the Printing Bureau of the Engineering Department, also known as the 'Commission Printing Office', in August 1905. The Third Series is very interesting because of the myriad combinations in the overprints. The Canal Zone Director of Posts, sent a memorandum to all postmasters instructing them to sell these stamps for their face value in gold, or in Colombian silver at the rate of two for one. All the stamps in this series were overprinted in black from the same style of Canal Zone plates, in several different stages, with slight changes in the lettering for each stage. The overprinting plate was set up to overprint a full sheet of 100 stamps in one pass. new plates were brought in after several printings as