Scientific Intelligence — Zoology. 3^ 



British gypsies, as to have become well-nigh extinct.* These gyp- 

 sies are of Indian origin, and a wandering tribe of Hindustan, called 

 Sikligurs, reminded Mr Pickering of the European gipsies more than 

 any other Indians ho fell in with. Like these, the Sikligurs are 

 coves ^ or tinkers. 



This, however, is by the way. Although it is as well to make a 

 note of the Indian extraction of the English and other European 

 gypsies, it is not for this reason that they have been mentioned. 

 They find a place here for the sake of illustrating what is meant by 

 the wandering tribes of India, whilst at the same time they throw a 

 slight illustration over the nature of castes. Lastly, they are essen- 

 tially parts of an ethnological investigation — ethnological rather than 

 either social or political. Their characteristics are referable to a 

 difference of descent ; and they are tinkers, wanderers, poachers, 

 and smugglers, not so much because they are either gypsies or In- 

 dians, as because they are of a different stock from the English. 

 They are foreigners in the fullest sense of the term ; and they differ 

 from their fellow-citizens just as the Jew does, though less advan- 

 tageously. 



Now India swarms with the analogues of the English gypsy ; so 

 much so as to make it likely that the latter is found as far from his 

 original country as Wales and Norway, simply because he is a vaga- 

 bond, not because he is an Indian. — Ethnology of the British D^ 

 pendencies. By Dr Latham, p. 195. 



6. Recent Impressions of the Feet of Birds. — Mr J. L. Hayes 

 stated, that Dr Webster, of Nova Scotia, had lately procured some 

 specimens of recent bird-tracks in the sand of the Bay of Fundy, 

 which were precisely like the fossil bird-tracks of the sandstone of 

 the Connecticut valley. The enormous tides of this Bay wear away 

 the sandstone, and deposit it on the neighbouring beaches to the 

 depth of from half an inch to an inch at each side. Dr Webster 

 carefully removed some of this sand, bearing the footprints of 

 marsh birds, and baked it so as to preserve the impressions perfectly. 

 It was even found that, in splitting these slabs into layers, the im- 

 pressions of the track could be traced through three or four of them, 

 as in the fossil specimens. The same success attended his experi- 

 ments on the impressions of recent rain-drops. Dr Gould men- 

 tioned that he had seen similar specimens from Nova Scotia baked 

 by the heat of the summer sun during the recess of the tide ; and 

 Lyell also obtained specimens, which were so satisfactory as to 

 convince English geologists that the fossil bird-tracks were really 

 what they had been considered by American geologists. — Proc, 

 Boston Society of Natural History, Feb. — American Annual of 

 Scientific Discovery for 1851, p. 314. 



* From this language I imagine that the three following words have come 

 into the English two of them heing slang, and one a sporting term — rtim, cove, 

 jockey. 



