(_b_) The development of crime is precocious. Rossi ascertained at what age 46 of his 100 criminals commenced their criminal career. Of these 46, no less than 40 began before the age of twenty--_i.e._, 1 at four years of age, 2 at seven, 6 at eight, 1 at nine, 5 at ten, 1 at eleven, 3 at twelve; and so on.[80] The evidence from France, from England, and from America gives very similar results. Children may even become expert professional criminals, and not in Europe alone. Thus, in India, where of recent years professional poisoning has assumed great development, and to a large extent taken the place of thuggi, “a Brahman boy at Bahraich, in May 1885, drugged a party of men travelling with the agent of the Rajah of Mohsan. Although only twelve years old, this was his fifth appearance in the dock. Another boy, a few months later, cooked some pulse for three pilgrims from Gaya; and the pilgrims were picked up shortly afterwards insensible near the railway yard at Allahabad. This boy had been charged with committing a similar offence in the May previous, but had got off because the complainants, impatient of the law’s delay, changed their story, and attributed their delirium to the heat of the sun.” The Sonorias, again, in the north-west provinces of India, are wonderfully expert pickpockets, and they train up their children in the same paths. “A Sonoria boy of ten or twelve years, with his pretty innocent face and his clean silk clothes, is a most attractive little object of villainy. His hand slides into a pocket, and he hands over the contents to a man behind him, who in his turn makes them over to a third, and returns to watch over the urchin. If caught, the boy cries and protests his innocence, but his volubility is against him, for no honest native child can talk like a Sonoria boy.”[81] It is more interesting to note that there is a certain form of criminality almost peculiar to children, a form to which the term “moral insanity” may very fairly be ascribed. This has been described by Krafft-Ebing, Mendel, Savage, and others, and is characterised by a certain eccentricity of character, a dislike of family habits, an incapacity for education, a tendency to lying, together with astuteness and extraordinary cynicism, bad sexual habits, and cruelty towards animals and companions. It shows itself between the ages of five and eleven, and is sometimes united with precocious intellectual qualities. There can be no doubt that many of these develop into instinctive criminals. Sometimes these characters only appear at puberty, together with exaggerated sexual tendencies, in children who have previously been remarkable only for their mental precocity, but whose energy seems now to be thrown into a new channel.