In 1821 a wide district of Northern France known as that of Santerre, between Peronne and Montdidier, was the scene of numerous and repeated crimes. There was no mystery about their perpetrators; the thieves and their victims lived side by side, yet the latter only spoke of them with bated breath, and shrank from denouncing them to the police. At last the authorities interposed and arrested the malefactors, who were tried and disposed of in due course of law. It was found that they were all of one family, which had started originally in one village and ramified gradually into neighbouring districts. Eleven years later, in 1832, a second generation had come to manhood, and these true sons of their fathers perpetrated exactly the same offences. Yet again, in 1852, a fresh wave of depredation passed over the district, and again the same families were responsible for the crimes. The last manifestation was perhaps the worst of all. Thefts, arson, and murder had been of repeated occurrence, but no arrests were made until a knife found in the possession of a villager was identified as one of a lot stolen from a travelling cheap-Jack. The man who had it was a Hugot. Through him others were implicated, a Villet and a Lemaire. These three names, Hugot, Villet, and Lemaire, were full of sinister significance in the neighbourhood, and recalled a long series of dark deeds, perpetrated by the ancestors of these very criminals. Lombroso has collected a number of cases showing how the criminal tendency has reappeared in successive generations. Dumollard, the wholesale murderer of women, was the son of a murderer; Patetot, another murderer, was the grandson and great-grandson of a criminal. There was a family named Nathan, of which, on one particular day, there were fourteen members in the same gaol. These Nathans were a band of thieves entirely made up [Illustration: A MEMBER OF THE THIEF CASTE AT TRICHINOPOLY. (_Drawn from Life by G. Gold._)] of relations--parents and children, brothers and cousins. It has been observed that the most notorious Italian brigands regularly inherited the business from their parents; we shall see presently how the Coles and Youngers of the Western States of America were all closely related; many of the most desperate members of the Neapolitan Camorra were brothers. There is a village in the south of Italy which has been a nest and focus of criminals for centuries. The natives are mostly related to each other by intermarriage, and all seem bound by tradition to prey upon their fellows. Again, in the Madras Presidency, at Trichinopoly, a whole caste of thieves existed, one and all vowed to various kinds of crime; and the practice of crime by certain Indian tribes generation after generation is well known to Indian police officers.