where the servants of the house keep watch at night. The whole house is built of wood, and substantially constructed. Though the houses look antiquated, they have a classical appearance all their own. To the north-east is the gosala, where large numbers of oxen and cows are housed. The furniture of a Nambutiri is extremely scanty. There are several cots, some made of coir (cocoanut fibre), and others of wooden planks. The kurmasana is the Nambutiri's devotional seat, and consists of a jak (Artocarpus integrifolia) plank carved in the form of a tortoise. Other seats, of a round or oblong shape, are also used, and no Brahman addresses himself to his meal without being seated on one of them. Every Brahman visitor is offered one, and is even pressed to sit on it. When the writer went to a Brahman house at Kalati, the native village of Sankaracharya, and wished the hosts not to trouble themselves about a seat for him, he was told that the contact of a Brahman's nates with the floor was harmful to the house. Hanging cots, attached to the ceiling by chains of iron, are common things in a Nambutiri's house, especially in the bed-rooms. Skins of spotted deer, used to sit on during prayers, also form part of the Nambutiri's furniture." The Nambutiris follow the makkatayam law of inheritance from father to son; not, however, precisely as do the other people who do so. Nor is their system of inheritance the same as that of Brahmans to the eastward (i.e., of Southern India generally), with whom the family property may be divided up amongst the male members at the instance of any one of them. The Nambutiri household is described by Mr. Subramani Aiyar as representing a condition intermediate between the impartible matriarchal form of the Nayars and the divided patriarchal form of the other coast. Among the Nambutiris, the eldest male member of the family is the Karanavan or manager of it, and has complete control over all the property. The younger members of the family are entitled to nothing but maintenance. The head of the family may be a female, provided there is none of the other sex. The eldest son alone marries. The accepted practice, as well as the recognised principle among the Nambutiris, seems to be in consonance with the directions expounded by Manu, viz.-- Immediately on the birth of his first-born, a man is the father of a son, and is free from the debt to the manes. That son is, therefore, worthy to receive the whole estate. That son alone, on whom he throws his debt, is begotten for (the fulfilment of) the law. All the rest they consider the offspring of desire. As a father supports his sons, so let the eldest support his younger brothers, and so let them, in accordance with the law, behave towards their eldest brother as sons behave towards their father.