blished, some forty years ago, in a cellar of Old
Scotland Yard, as a place where young police officers might get an
elementary acquaintance of the ways and appliances of evil-doers.

Gradually relics of great crimes began to accumulate there until there
are now over six hundred exhibits, ranging over the whole gamut of
criminal activity. There is much, perhaps too much, to appeal to the
morbid-minded--revolvers by the score, wicked-looking blood-stained
knives, hangmen's ropes, plaster casts of murderers taken after death;
but more interesting are the tools and equipment of the professional
thief and swindler, by which demonstrations are made to raw policemen
of the weapons with which his adversaries wage their war upon society.

In one case it is an innocent-looking ring, now palpably tarnished
brass. But examine it, and you will find that it bears a tolerable
imitation of an eighteen-carat hall-mark. When it was fine and bright it
was picked up in the street, very ostentatiously, by an astute gentleman
who promptly sold it for as much as he could get from a passer-by, who
had probably thought it a bargain when he noticed the forged hall-mark.
That same trick flourishes to-day, as it flourished over a century ago
when Sir John Fielding issued a warning to the public.

Close by are a little heap of white sapphires, calculated at one time,
with their glitter and dazzle when set as "diamond" rings, to deceive
all but the most sophisticated of pawnbrokers. Similarly so,
"field-glasses" stamped with the names of famous makers. These are
little things, perhaps, but they give the most trusting of young
constables some ideas of "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain."

Publicans and pawnbrokers seem to be the invariable victims of a certain
type of swindler. There is a walking-stick, innocent enough to all
appearance, but with a tong-like attachment which, at the touch of a
spring, will jump out of the ferrule, enabling a wineglass full of coins
to be lifted from a shelf across the counter.

A glazed black bag with hinged bottom, which may be placed over any
article and automatically swallow it is another ingenious invention.

All these, however, are byways of crime. There is much more to be
absorbed by the learner in police science. Here he is shown the
different types of jemmies, and bars of steel so fashioned that they may
be used as chisels or levers. Here are bunches of skeleton keys which,
in the hands of exp