finding the caches of grain stored up by field-mice. To people with such slender means of subsistence the gains of petty pilfering offer a strong temptation; but the Nakkalas seldom commit any of the bolder kinds of crime, though now and again they have been known to rise to burglary, more rarely to robbery, and sometimes even to dacoity. Of late years most of them have settled down permanently in villages. They live in very small huts made of palmyra-leaves. They add to their earnings from their hereditary occupations the wages to be earned by light cooly work in the villages, and are consequently looked upon by the rest of the community as rather an acquisition when cheap labour is in demand. They are sometimes employed as horse-keepers by subordinate officials; and their women are very useful as sweepers, since, though they are exceedingly dirty in their persons, they are not considered to carry ceremonial pollution. If treated well, they live in this hand-to-mouth fashion and give no trouble to the authorities, and their present unfortunate notoriety as a criminal tribe is largely due to the performances of one notorious gang of them in Rámachandrapuram taluk. This gang, led first by one well-known criminal and later by another, consisted of about fifteen men and lived an entirely nomadic life, subsisting on the proceeds of its thefts and burglaries. It has now been broken up, ten of its members being in jail (most of them on long sentences) and the others, with one exception, being in hiding; and probably the criminal propensities of the Nakkalas will henceforth be less in evidence.
Three other classes of people, namely, some of the Málas, the 'Pachayappas,' and the 'Peddinti Gollas,' have pronounced criminal tendencies. Two small sets of Málas in the central delta (one in the limits of Kottapéta station, and the other in those of Nagaram station) have a decided turn for burglary. A number of convictions are on record against them. The Pachayappas consist of six wandering gangs, containing 68 registered male members, who are constantly on the move and are under police supervision. They originally came from the direction of Guntúr. They ostensibly live by begging, but there is little doubt that the proceeds of crime contribute to maintain the men in the robust condition they exhibit and to support the crowd of children who belong to them. Cases are from time to time established against them, and some of them have been convicted of burglary and theft. The Peddinti Gollas comprise four gangs who appeared in the district in 1902. They are said to have come from Kurnool, and to
