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ix mud floors of their rooms, and occasionally to leakage from ill-made and old thatched roofs, while mice and other vermin have full and free access to them at all times. The mice are particularly destructive, as they not only gnaw cloth, boards and palm-leaves, but by their liquid discharges, rapidly destroy the texture of arsenicised paper. The fact was first brought to my notice by a mukhtear when I was a boy. He asked my permission to put two sheets of fresh-looking, written, stamped paper for a night on the bottom of a cage of white mice which were my pets. The permission was granted, and the next morning the papers were taken out, stained and decayed very like old documents, which they were, I then learnt, intended to pass for. I was also told and shown that by careful and repeated washing with a mixture of the fluid discharge of mice with water, paper can be made to assume the appearance of any age that may be desired: the effect produced is not confined to the surface, but is perceptible even in the texture of the paper. Copyists and Copying.-16. Even as in medieval Europe monks were the principal copyists of ancient works, so were their congeners, the principal preservers of Sanskrit literature in India during the last ten or fifteen hundred years. Yatis, Sannyasis, Gossains, and their disciples congregated in large Maths, devoted all their leisure hours, the former in composing and the latter in copying, and the monasteries benefited largely by their labours. In the Toles the pupils were, and still are, the principal copyists. In return for the board, lodging and education they receive, free of all charge, from their tutors, they copy all such works as their tutors require, and thus the Toles are enriched. For the public, however, the principal copyists are the Kayasthas. Old and used-up men of this caste, when no longer fit to earn their livelihood by active exertion, generally betake to copying ancient works for householders and private gentlemen, and the bulk of the MSS. now extant is due to their labours. Poor Brahmans also betake to this occupation. Seated on their haunches, with the paper, or palm-leaf, resting on their raised knees, which serve for a table, and the pen and ink procured from materials everywhere available, they ply their vocation without making any outlay, or subjecting themselves to any exertion which would be unsuited to their habits and time of life. The remuneration they formerly derived ranged from one rupee to two rupees eight annas per thousand slokas of thirty-two thousand letters, according to the quality of writing. The rates have now been doubled, owing principally to the demand for copyists being limited, and very few