erts, will open any ordinary lock in the world. A
massive steel implement shaped like a gigantic tin-opener, and used to
rip open the backs of safes, is another item in the collection. There
are vice-like tweezers which, when properly screwed up, will cut quietly
through the bolts of, say, a jeweller's shutters.

Still more scientific is a complicated apparatus with tubes in which
oxygen and acetylene gas are used to melt through safes with a fierce
heat--a quieter, less clumsy, and more effective method than the use of
explosives.

It would take more space than is at my command to detail all the
practical instruction which is afforded by the object lessons the young
constable has in the museum. Not only is he initiated into wrinkles and
tricks which he may meet any day, but he is shown into those more subtle
branches of crime which few but specialists enter.

Coining is a case in point. There is a complete coiner's outfit--which,
for obvious reasons, I shall not describe--and the process is explained
from A to Z. Now-a-days the "smasher" is a difficult individual to
circumvent. He works preferably with real silver, and with coins like
sixpences and shillings which are not so closely scrutinised as those of
higher denominations. Of course, even in a genuine sixpence the silver
is not worth its face value.

A step higher in the criminal hierarchy is the forger. Of his
handicraft, specimens are not lacking. There are relics seized when a
notorious forger went into forced seclusion for ten years some time ago.
He manufactured Bank of France thousand-franc notes and foreign bonds,
and even used lithographic stones to imitate the water-mark. Photography
played an important part in his operations.

I have shown, sketchily perhaps, how the primary function of the museum
is carried out. But it has another and allied interest of great
importance to all interested in police science.

One may study the stages by which the professional criminal has adapted
the work of invention to his ends, and mark at the same time how the
swindler always strikes the same old chord of credulity in human nature.

Dropped in one of the corners is a heavy bar of brass, originally in the
possession of an early gold-brick swindler. Mr. Albert Blair Hunter, of
Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A., communicated with two gentlemen in this
country, stating that a wealthy relative had died possessed of
considerable property, among which was a box of gold fro