As an additional precautionary measure to prevent plague from entering the gaol, every prisoner who catches a rat and produces it alive is given a reward of ten marks. This is a distinct gain toward a shorter sentence, for twenty-four marks means one day’s remission. It has been surmised, as the rats are very numerous in the gaol in spite of wire netting everywhere placed to keep them out, that either the warders arrange to bring them in or the prisoners maintain reserves for breeding purposes. The cook-house is in the yard where the men are paraded. Two meals are served daily, one at 7.30 A. M. and the other after 5 P. M., but in addition a little parched boiled _gram_ is given to each convict in the middle of the day, when there is a short recess from work. Besides the large _chupattis_, made of wheat and Indian corn, a few ounces of _dal_ are served in the morning, and vegetables with condiments in the evening. All the vegetables and condiments are produced by the convicts in the large garden attached to the gaol. It is said that no convict has ever gotten away altogether, but that those who manage to escape occasionally are always recaptured. As the gaol is situated in a large desert, tracking the runaways is comparatively easy. On one occasion, a man was apparently missing at evening roll-call. For considerable time his identity could not be ascertained, but after a thorough search and re-checking, it was remembered that a murderer had been hanged that day, and the officials had failed to strike his name from the roll. The hospital is exceedingly clean and well kept. The routine of the gaol generally runs smoothly, and the character of the treatment and discipline in this typical prison of India will bear comparison with that in many institutions of a like kind at home and abroad. Some of the local gaols in India are worth a passing mention. A good specimen was that of Sirsah on the confines of the Bikaneer desert. Colonel Hervey visited it and speaks of it as a model gaol. He says, “Its lofty walls are shielded by a covered way running round its top. It has an outer and an inner ditch at the foot of the walls, and upward-sloping towers at its four corners, resembling the castles of a chess-board. The prisoners in it were warmly clothed and looked sleek, and being told off to healthful although hard labour, they ate with eagerness their diet of curried meat, curried _shorwah_, or soup, and wheaten cakes. This was served out to them plentifully while I was there. They sat down on the ground in lines without reference to castes, and all promiscuously partook of the food set before them. I was astonished at this, for there is generally so much difficulty in the matter of food, owing to caste prejudices.”