question I ever handled was presented to me by one of the authors—Mr. Crofton—at the close of my Social Science Congress paper read at Manchester last October, entitled “The Dialect of the English Gipsies,” which work, without any disrespect to the authors—and I know they will overlook this want of respect—remained uncut for nearly two months.  With further reference to their Indian origin, the following is an extract from “Hoyland’s Historical Survey,” in which the author says:—“The Gipsies have no writing peculiar to themselves in which to give a specimen of the construction of their dialect.  Music is the only science in which the Gipsies participate in any considerable degree; they likewise compose, but it is after the manner of the Eastern people, extempore.”  Grellmann asserts that the Hindustan language has the greatest affinity with that of the Gipsies.  He also infers from the following consideration that Gipsies are of the lowest class of Indians, namely, Parias, or, as they are called in Hindustan, Suders, and goes on to say that the whole great nation of Indians is known to be divided into four ranks, or stocks, which are called by a Portuguese name, Castes, each of which has its own particular sub-division.  Of these castes, the Brahmins is the first; the second contains the Tschechterias, or Setreas; the third consists of the Beis, or Wazziers; the fourth is the caste of the above-mentioned Suders, who, upon the peninsula of Malabar, where their condition is the same as in Hindustan, are called Parias and Pariers.  The first were appointed by Brahma to seek after knowledge, to give instruction,

and to take care of religion.  The second were to serve in war.  The third were, as the Brahmins, to cultivate science, but particularly to attend to the breeding of cattle.  The caste of the Suders was to be subservient to the Brahmins, the Tschechterias, and the Beis.  These Suders, he goes on to say, are held in disdain, and they are considered infamous and unclean from their occupation, and they are abhorred because they eat flesh; the three other castes living entirely on vegetables.  Baldeus says the Parias or Suders are a filthy people and wicked crew.  It is related in the “Danish Mission Intelligencer,” nobody can deny that the Parias are the dregs and refuse of all the Indians; they are thievish, and have wicked dispositions.  Neuhof assures us, “the Parias are full of every kind of dishonesty; they do not consider lying and cheating to be sinful.”  The Gipsy’s solicitude to conceal his language is also a striking Indian trait.  Professor Pallas says of the Indians round Astracan, custom has rendered them to the greatest degree suspicious about their language.  Salmon says that the nearest relations cohabit with each other; and as to education, their children grow up in the most shameful neglect, without either discipline or instruction.  The missionary journal before quoted says with respect to matrimony among the Suders or Gipsies, “they act like beasts, and their children are brought up without restraint or information.”  “The Suders are fond of horses, so are the Gipsies.”  Grellmann goes on to say “that the Gipsies hunt after cattle which have died of distempers in order to feed on them, and when they can procure more of the flesh than is sufficient for one day’s consumption, they dry it in the sun.  Such is the constant custom with the Suders in India.”  “That the Gipsies and natives of Hindustan resemble each other in complexion and shape is undeniable.  And what is asserted of the young Gipsy girls rambling about with their fathers, who are musicians, dancing with lascivious and indecent gesture to divert any person who is willing to give them a small

gratuity for so acting, is likewise perfectly Indian.”  Sonneratt confirms this in the account he gives of the dancing girls of Surat.  Fortune-telling is practised all over the East, but the peculiar kind professed by the Gipsies, viz., chiromancy, constantly referring to whether the parties shall be rich or poor, happy or unhappy in marriage, &c., is nowhere met with but in India.  Sonneratt says:—“The Indian smith carries his tools, his shop, and his forge about with him, and works in any place where he can find employment.  He has a stone instead of an anvil, and his whole apparatus is a pair of tongs, a hammer, a beetle, and a file.  This is very much like Gipsy tinkers,” &c.  It is usual for Parias, or Suders, in India to have their huts outside the villages of other castes.  This is one of the leading features of the Gipsies of this country.  A visit to the outskirts of London, where the Gipsies encamp, will satisfy any one upon this point, viz., that our Gipsies are Indians.  In isolated cases a strong religious feeling has manifested itself in certain persons of the Bunyan type of character and countenance—a strong frame, with large, square, massive forehead, such as Bunyan possessed; for it should be noted that John Bunyan was a Gipsy tinker, with not an improbable mixture of the blood of an Englishman in his veins, and, as a rule, persons of this mixture become powerful for good or evil.  A case in point, viz., Mrs. Simpson and her family, has come under my own observation lately, which forcibly illustrates my meaning, both as regards the evil Mrs. Simpson did in the former part of her life, and for the last twenty years in her efforts to do good among persons of her class, and also among others, as she has travelled about the country.  The exodus of the Gipsies from India may be set down, first, to famine, of which India, as we all know, suffers so much periodically; second, to the insatiable love of gold and plunder bound up in the nature of the Gipsies—the West, from an Indian point of view, is always looked upon as a land of gold, flowing with milk and honey; third, the hatred the Gipsies have for wars,

and as in the years of 1408 and 1409, and many years previous to these dates, India experienced some terrible bloody conflicts, when hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were butchered by the cruel monster Timur Beg in cold blood, and during the tenth and eleventh centuries by Mahmood the Demon, on purpose to make proselytes to the Mohammedan faith, it is only natural to suppose that under those circumstances the Gipsies would leave the country to escape the consequences following those calamities, over-populated as it was, numbering close upon 200,000,000 of human beings. [8]  I am inclined to think that it

would be hunger and starvation upon their heels that would be the propelling power to send them forward in quest of food.  From Attock, Peshawur, Cabul, and Herat, they would tramp through Persia by Teheran, and enter the Euphrates Valley at Bagdad.  From Calcutta, Madras, Seringapatam, Bangalore, Goa, Poonah, Hydrabad, Aurungabad, Nagpoor, Jabbulpoor, Benares, Allahabad, Surat, Simla, Delhi, Lahore, they would wander along to the mouth of the river Indus, and commence their journey at Hydrabad, and travelling by the shores of the Indian Ocean, stragglers coming in from Bunpore, Gombaroon, the commencement of the Persian Gulf, when they would travel by Bushino to Bassora.  At this place they would begin to scatter themselves over some parts of Arabia, making their headquarters near Molah, Mecca, and other parts of the country, crossing over Suez, and getting into Egypt in large numbers.  Others would take the Euphrates Valley route, which, by the way, is the route of the proposed railway to