12. These 'colonies of thieves and robbers' are still the despair of the Indian administrator. They are known to Anglo-Indian law as 'criminal tribes', and a special Act has been passed for their regulation. The principle of that Act is police supervision, exercised by means of visits of inspection, and the issue of passports. The Act has been applied from time to time to various tribes, but has in every case failed. In 1891, Sir Auckland Colvin, then Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, adopted the strong measure of suddenly capturing many hundreds of Sânsias, a troublesome criminal tribe, in the Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, and Alîgarh Districts. Some of the prisoners were sent to a special jail, or reformatory, called a 'settlement', at Sultânpur in Oudh, and the others were drafted off to various landlords' estates. These latter were supposed to devote themselves to agriculture. The editor, as Magistrate of Muzaffarnagar, effected the capture of more than seven hundred Sânsias in that district, and dispatched them in accordance with orders. As most people expected, the agricultural pupils promptly absconded. Multitudes of Sânsias in the Panjâb and elsewhere remained unaffected by the raid, which could not have any permanent effect. The milder expedient of settling and nursing a large colony, organized in villages, of another criminal tribe, the Bâwarias (Boureahs), was also tried many years ago in the same district of Muzaffarnagar. The people settled readily enough, and reclaimed a considerable area of waste land, but were not in the least degree reformed. At the beginning of the cold season, in October or November, most of the able-bodied men annually leave the villages, and remain absent on distant forays till March or April, when they return with their booty, enjoying almost complete immunity, for the reasons stated in the text. On one occasion some of these Bâwarias of Muzaffarnagar stole a lâkh and a half of rupees (about £12,000 at that time), in currency notes at Tuticorin, in the south of the peninsula, 1,400 miles distant from their home. The number of such criminal tribes, or castes, is very great, and the larger of these communities, such as the Sânsias, each comprise many thousands of members, diffused over an enormous area in several provinces. It is, therefore, impossible to put them down, except by the use of drastic measures such as no civilized European Government could propose or sanction. The criminal tribes, or castes, are, to a large extent, races; but, in many of these castes, fresh blood is constantly introduced by the admission of outsiders, who are willing to eat with the members of the tribe, and so become for ever incorporated in the brotherhood. The gipsies of Europe are closely related to certain of these Indian tribes. The official literature on the subject is of considerable bulk. Mr. W. Crooke's small book, _An Ethnographic Glossary_, published in 1891 (Government Press, Allahabad), is a