ing like vultures around the carcase of some animal that has
just died of some abominable disease is quite enough to inspire even an
unprejudiced European meat-eater-with the most wholesome horror; and the
reader need not, I think, be surprised at the feelings of disgust which
these men's habits inspire amongst the respectable classes of the
community. But independently of all feelings of disgust, there are
sanitary considerations which are of infinitely more importance, for it so
happens that, at a time when the weather is hottest and the season most
unhealthy, a larger number of animals die; and I have very little doubt
that this eating of rotten meat causes amongst the Pariahs a large
quantity of disease, and especially of cholera, which they would not fail
to disseminate with fatal certainty amongst all classes, were the native
Christians compelled to take the Sacrament indiscriminately. And, in my
own experience, I have observed that cholera has passed through districts,
that the upper classes have been free from it, but that amongst the lower
the victims were many. And the same sanitary reasons that apply to the
Sacrament apply equally well to the mixing of castes indiscriminately in
the churches; for it might so happen, as it frequently does, that fever
and cholera may be prevalent amongst the lower castes, while the higher
may be at that time comparatively free from such diseases. So that, when
we take all these points into consideration, we shall find that the German
missionaries were perfectly right in placing the men of the higher caste
on one side of the church, and those of the lower on the other, and that
they were equally right in allowing the higher castes to approach the
Sacrament at a different time from the lower. I may here remark that I
once mentioned this taking of the Sacrament in a sort of order of
precedence to a clergyman in a country parish, when he told me that
exactly the same sort of thing occurred in his parish, and that the lord
of the manor invariably took the Sacrament first, and, if I recollect
rightly, the parish clerk last; and a special instance of this in a Scotch
parish was mentioned to me not long ago.

The same sanitary considerations will also naturally be of value when we
come to consider that indiscriminate social intercourse which the
missionaries so much insist upon as one of the necessary signs of grace. I
do not, of course, say that it is not advisable, and that it would no