TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 199 



to 80,000 square miles, within the track of the Greenland cuiTent. On the subject 

 of g-laciers, the Colonel expressed his opinion that the " Igalildio " was once an ice- 

 fiord, — that the glacier extended where water was now seen, the water reaching 

 even more into the interior than the edge of the present glacier — the moving of 

 the ice having groimd \w the rocks, and the earth and the small particles gradually 

 filling up the fiord. The supposed ice-area of Greenland bemg about 400,000 

 square miles, such an ai-ea ought, if all of it were ice, to give ofi" more upon the 

 known coast than was seen. It was reasonable to doubt the existence of such an 

 extent of ice. 



The English Gipsies and their Dialect. By Bath C. Smaht. 



The author of this paper was careful to explain in the outset that he did not 

 profess to deal with comprehensive questions relating to the Gipsj^ race as a 'whole, 

 but that his observations were limited to his own personal experience among the 

 English Gipsies. He began with a short description of the chief phj'sical and 

 psychological characteristics of the Romany people as they are now to oe met with 

 in England. In addition to then- swarthy skin and black hair and eyes, he re- 

 marked the prevalence among them of a weU-marked aquiline nose, and the 

 obliquity of the orbital arches, which slant upwards to the glabella or root of the 

 nose, combining together into one conmion arch, instead of appearing to be seg- 

 ments of two separate cii'cles, these several features foiming a tout ensemble having 

 an oriental cast strikingly different from the Anglo-Saxon physiognomy, or that of 

 any other British race. The latter and by far the larger portion of the paper was 

 devoted to the linguistic peculiarities of the English Gipsies. His remarks under 

 this head were based on a vocabidary, which accompanied the paper, of upwards of 

 800 words collected by himself during actual intercourse with members of various 

 Gipsy families. These words had all been minutely compared with Grellmann's 

 and Sorrow's German cand Spanish Gipsy Dialects, and their homologies traced 

 wherever it was possible. The following is a brief sketch of the remai'ks made on 

 the composition of words and of the various parts of speech and their inflections : — 



A peculiarity of the Gipsy language wherever spoken is the munber of words 

 terminating in engro or menr/ro, escro or mescro, but the English dialect seems 

 especially rich in these compounds ; e. ff., 



Bockoromengro A shepherd. From Bokoro (sheep). 



Boshomengro A fiddle. From Bosh (to fiddle). 



Cooromengro A soldier. From Coor (to fight). 



Massengiy A butcher. From Mass (meat). 



Sastermescro A blacksmith. From Saster (iron). 



Poggeromesty A hammer. From Pogger (to break). 



But perhaps the most characteristic termination of aU is beti, or pen, added to ad- 

 jectives and verbs to form substantives. This affix is also of frequent occurrence 

 in Hindustani : — • 



Tatchipen Truth. From Tatcho (right). 



Hobben (for Holbeu) Victuals. Fsom Hoi (to eat). 



Naffilopen Sickness. From Naffilo (ill). 



The Gipsies have manufactured and adopted a class of words, generally appella- 

 tives, which ai'e essentially of the nature of puns. They consist of words in which 

 a fancied resemblance of sound has suggested their translation into Romanes ; e. g., 



Lalopeero (red foot) Redford. 



Milesto-gav (donkey-town) Doncaster. 



Interchanges of certain letters fi'equently occiu: in Gipsy words, but always accord- 

 ing to rules ; and this must be borne in mind in tracing their derivations. Inter- 

 changes take place between the following letters — K and 11, K and T; G and D, 

 F and S, &c., and the liquids are very often confounded, 



Geammae. 

 Masculine nouns generally end in a consonant or o. 



