TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 909 



These gipsy tribes speak generally a language of their own, called in the west 

 Zinagari, or Zingari, and to the south Zenagari. Ijeo Africanus calls it Sungai. 

 The Zenagar race (the old Getulian) extend beyond the Senegal, which owes its 

 name to them. While there are many words in the European Zingari to be 

 found in the Zinagari of the Sahara, there are very many words that are not 

 common to them. A careful comparison of these languages by a philologist is 

 Tery desirable. 



Part II. 



Ancient writers, referred to by Josephus, and an eminent authority, Tacitus, con- 

 tend that Libya was the cradle of the Hebrew race. An old author, quoted by 

 Josephus, describes a race that were in Western Ethiopia before the time of Abra- 

 ham, the Judada-uiis. These were probably the Hebrews of Libya and the Sahara. 

 They are dirt'erent from what are known as the Barbary Jews, the descendants of 

 fugitives from Spain and Portugal. They are rarely seen, living with the Rifis and 

 Susis as their tradesmen and business men, and securing protection by a small annual 

 payment. But there are independent tribes who own no master — some on the southern 

 Atlas, some far east near the desert of Touareg, some, called Daggata, in the Sahara 

 and as far south as the Niger. These tribes were described, one of which is pro- 

 tected by ' The Tomb of Our Beloved Lady ' — that of the Joan of Arc of the Berbers, 

 a Jewish woman, Kuhina, who headed them against the Arabs and became their 

 queen. The Arabs were compelled to make peace with her followers, and so great 

 was her reputed sanctity, that the district around is a safe asylum for the Jews. 

 Some of the Jews in the Sahara are black, with woolly hair : but most of the 

 Berber Jews are very good-looking, and their women have the repute of being the 

 most beautiful in the world. The Berber Jews look down on the coast Jews as 

 schismatics, and are very rigid in their disciphne, differing from the others in their 

 dress and rites. 



The writer showed that from a remote period there must have been in Libya a 

 building which was claimed to be the Temple of Solomon. In Smith's ' Dictionary 

 of the Bible ' (y. ' Onias ') is something on the subject of this temple. What has 

 become of it since it fell into the hands of the Moslems is not known. The writer 

 pointed out a singularly large number of the names of places in Sus which can be 

 traced in Genesis, and suggested the inquiry, Has there been a migration of 

 Hebrews from Palestine to Libya, or vice versa ? 



The Jews and the gipsies must have been cast in the same mould, but must 

 have been made of very different material. That mould, he believed, was the life 

 in common in North Africa for thousands of years, in connection with the gold 

 trade and the caravans of that country. They are Siamese twins, like, and yet, 

 in some respects, utterly unlike, and equally unchangeable and distinct from the 

 rest of mankind. We are almost tempted to call the gipsies ' the other peculiar 

 people.' 



9. Colour-names amongst the English Gipsies. 

 By William E. A. Axon. 



Considerable discussion has taken place as to the development of the colour- 

 sense within the historic period. Mr. W. E. Gladstone's observations in 1858 as 

 to the poverty of the Homeric colour-vocabulary were amplified by Geiger and 

 Magnus. It is stated that blue, as an epithet applied to the sky, does not occur in 

 the Old Testament, the Zend-Avesta, the Rig- Veda, the Homeric poems, or in the 

 Koran. Mr. Gladstone in 1877 held that archaic man had a positive perception 

 only of light and darkness, and that in the Homeric age he had advanced to the 

 imperfect discrimination of red or yellow, but no further; green of grass and 

 foliage or the blue of the sky being never once mentioned. The theory depends 

 upon philological evidence, and the weak part of such an argument is that it may 

 confuse mere poverty of nomenclatui-e with defective perception. In several 

 instances this danger has been shown to be real. As far back as the Stone Age 

 there is evidence of the existence of the colour-sense. 



