Creatures of nature star in 1999 postage stamps

Nature in America will be a prominent feature of next year's postage stamps, a series that opens with a rabbit and includes Arctic animals, insects and spiders, aquarium fish and desert wildlife.

Jan. 5 will see the first new stamp of 1999, a Happy New Year stamp to mark the Year of the Hare on the Chinese astrological calendar, the Postal Service said Thursday.Like other new issues, the New Year stamp will bear the 33-cent first-class postage rate, up a penny from the current price, which takes effect Jan. 10.

The agency announced its 1999 stamp program at a show in New York.

Performing arts will be represented by stamps honoring James Cagney and the husband-wife team of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fon-tanne.

The 1999 additions to the Legends of American Music series honor Broadway songwriters and Hollywood composers.

Featured Broadway teams include Ira and George Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and individual songwriters Lorenz Hart, Meredith Willson and Frank Loesser.

The Hollywood composers stamps salute Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman and Erich Korngold.

These stamps complete the long-running music series that began in 1993 with issuance of the Elvis Presley stamp and the rock 'n' roll-rhythm and blues stamps.

The annual love stamp will feature Victorian designs and will be the first U.S. self-adhesive stamps die-cut to the shape of the images depicted.

Two stamps will be issued during the year designed to call attention to health. One features hospice care, and the other will promote awareness of prostate cancer.

A stamp entitled "Honoring Those Who Served" is designed to honor active military personnel, veterans, firefighters, law enforcers and those killed in the line of duty.

An "All Aboard" stamp set will feature five Art Deco-style passenger trains of the 1930s and 1940s.

Nature stamp appearances will include stamps honoring the 18th-century father-and-son botanists John and William Bartram, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead, aquarium fish, tropical flowers, insects, spiders.

A desert set will have 10 stamps including 25 typical animal and plant species, while the Arctic animals set will include the Arctic hare, Arctic fox, snowy owl, polar bear and gray wolf.

American glass will be featured on a stamp, and the California Gold Rush will be recalled. Other issues will highlight the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Irish immigration to America.