the lowest dregs of the people to the highest ranks of the nobility.”  In this instance, however, I cannot help suspecting that the families must have risen on something more substantial than their pure habits.  But in matters of this sort we are very much in want (as indeed we are on almost every Indian subject) of more detailed and particularly substantiated evidence.  As regards the subject of low castes raising themselves in the social scale, I know of no instances that have fallen within my own observation, but I have obtained information from other parts of Mysore, the truth of which I have no reason to doubt, although I would advise the reader to receive what I have to say on this point with the same caution that he should receive all information which is even in the smallest degree removed from the experience of personal observation.  With this caution, I may then observe that, from information I have received, I have ample reason to believe that in the interior of Mysore there are many families of Pariahs who are as well off, in point of cattle, cash and land, as the average of the farmer caste, notwithstanding that the forefathers of these Pariahs were merely the servants of the farmer tribe.  Nor is this all.  Many instances, I believe, may be pointed out of members of the farmer tribe being the tenants of the once-despised Pariah.  The Pariah, it is true, does not reap all the advantages from his altered circumstances that might be expected in other countries, but it is a mistake to suppose that wealth does not tell in India as it does elsewhere.[43] The well-to-do Pariah (and in the Nuggur division of Mysore I am told there are many such) receives that respect which is invariably paid to those who have much substance.  He no longer stands respectfully without the veranda of a farmer of ordinary position, but takes his seat in the veranda itself, and on terms of perfect equality.  But the farmer will not eat with his visitor, nor give him his daughter in marriage.  This to us would be a disagreeable reflection, no doubt; but, in their present political state, I cannot see that the happiness or prosperity of the people is in any way affected by these facts, nor am I aware that any one has attempted to prove that the natural comforts of the people have been in any way lessened by these social separations.

Turning now to glance at the way in which caste laws are sometimes set aside, it is impossible to avoid suspecting that the instances given of caste feeling in these respects, though perhaps true in themselves, are not fair examples of what would universally occur in cases of emergency even with the most caste-observing people in India.  From the instances given (and those most commonly given refer to natives preferring to die of thirst rather than take water from the hands of a person of inferior caste), people are led to believe that under no circumstances will a breach of caste take place, or be overlooked if it does take