house of a toddy man to inquire how he was, and to see whether they could do anything for him. These toddy-drawers rank at least third amongst the castes in Manjarabad, and though none of the members of the farmer castes above them would eat of food prepared in a toddy-drawer's house, yet there were numbers of both these castes present. This feeling would not, that I am aware of, go as far as one of the carrion-eating Pariahs, but I am quite certain that it would extend to any other caste but theirs in the country. But on this point I do not offer any decided opinion, as, for what I know to the contrary, acts of kindness and hospitality may, no doubt, often have been extended even to the lowest. And I may also mention here that I have slept in the veranda of a farmer's house, in which members of the family slept close to some of my people, who were of the toddy-drawer caste above alluded to, and who, I am sure, were quite as welcome as members of their own caste would have been. But as regards all these matters concerning the inner life of the people, we know nothing, unless we actually live amongst them, and sleep in their houses, and, in fact, see the people at home; and as it is extremely difficult to find anyone who has done anything of the kind, it naturally follows that it is almost impossible to find anything like reliable sources of information regarding native habits throughout India. You may, it is true, stuff your very soul with information of some sort or other, if you go about asking questions, but if you do you will find yourself much in the same predicament that Johnson found himself in his tour to the Hebrides; and the reader may recollect that the worthy doctor very soon found that nothing could be more vague, unsatisfactory, and uncertain than the answers of an unsophisticated simple people, who were not much in the habit of being asked questions of any sort. However, the reader may, in the meantime, reasonably infer that the conduct of the people in the rural districts of India, and situated under similar circumstances, would not materially differ, as regards matters of caste, from the practice as existing in Manjarabad. And should that turn out to be the case, it is plain that those notions, as regards the practice of caste, which have been so industriously circulated in England, are almost entirely false.