and cannot travel fast or far enough to be out of reach of detection by daybreak. The Kallans' inveterate addiction to dacoity and theft render the caste to this day a thorn in the flesh of the authorities. A very large proportion of the thefts committed in the district are attributable to them. Nor are they ashamed of the fact. One of them defended his class by urging that every other class stole, the official by taking bribes, the vakil (law pleader) by fostering animosities, and so pocketing fees, the merchant by watering the arrack (spirit) and sanding the sugar, and so on, and that the Kallans differed from these only in the directness of their methods. Round about Melur, the people of the caste are taking energetically to wet cultivation, to the exclusion of cattle-lifting, with the Periyar water, which has lately been brought there. In some of the villages to the south of that town, they have drawn up a formal agreement (which has been solemnly registered, and is most rigorously enforced by the headmen), forbidding theft, recalling all the women who have emigrated to Ceylon and elsewhere, and, with an enlightenment which puts other communities to shame, prohibiting several other unwise practices which are only too common, such as the removal from the fields of cow-dung for fuel, and the pollution of drinking-water tanks (ponds) by stepping into them. Hard things have been said about the Kallans, but points to their credit are the chastity of their women, the cleanliness they observe in and around their villages, and their marked sobriety. A toddy-shop in a Kallan village is seldom a financial success."