Indian criminal annals record many curious forms of crime more or less peculiar to the country, and it will be interesting to specify some of the best known. Many are as old as the hills and are directly traceable to the innate character and distinguishing traits of the various races that people the great peninsula of Hindustan. There is a family likeness in the offences against morality and the rules generally binding upon the community at large, but some are encouraged and facilitated by the condition and organisation of the daily life of the people. Profound observers have penetrated to the darker and deeper recesses of the criminal mind of the native, both Hindu and Mussulman. Under the often placid, timid, civil-spoken and seemingly harmless native there lies a strange but potent combination of sensuality, jealousy and vindictiveness, backed by wild, ineradicable superstition, absolute untruthfulness and ruthless disregard for the value of human life. This is especially true of the Bengali, whose character has been powerfully portrayed by Lord Macaulay. A feeble, effeminate creature of sedentary pursuits, with delicate limbs, and without courage, independence or veracity, he is full of tact, ready with large promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood. With all his softness, he is by no means placable in his enmities or prone to pity, but is pertinacious in his purposes and dominated only by the immediate pressure of fear. Custom has been largely the parent of crime in India, and nowhere has heredity exercised greater influence. A large proportion of offences in India are committed by persons whose ancestors have done the same for centuries. Strong belief in the strength of family tradition and the potency of inherited traits and tendencies have long filled the Indian gaols. To these causes we must trace the vitality of certain crimes; we find in them the explanation of persistent gang-robberies, “Dacoity,” the drugging and poisoning of travellers, the kidnapping of children, the forgery, the forest frauds, the infanticide and secret murders; the whole series of offences against which is directed the penal code of India, originated by Lord Macaulay and praised by the highest experts, including Sir James Stephen, as the best system of criminal law in the world.