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 not be desirable to see a little more intercourse between class and class than exists at the present. But between all the better classes there is a much greater degree of intercourse than our missionaries would have us believe; and it is not true that one caste will eat only the food prepared by a person of his own caste. I cannot, of course, say what may be the case as regards other parts of India; but, as regards my own district, each caste will eat of the food prepared by any of the castes higher, or at least purer, than its own. For instance, a Gouda, who will not allow that the Lingayet caste is better than his own, will eat of food prepared by a Lingayet, while a Lingayet will not eat of food prepared by a Gouda. And the explanation of this is, that the Lingayet is a vegetarian, and meat might have been boiled in the Gouda's pots, while there would be nothing to offend the Gouda customs in the pots of a vegetarian host. But in these matters I entirely agree with the good Bishop Heber, who said that we had no right to interfere in their private life, or to meddle in any way with their social customs, as long as there was no idolatry in them.