216 
NATURAL HISTORY 
termination of tliis word is apparently Grecian : and as 
Mezeray and the gravest historians all agree that these 
vagrants did certainly migrate from Egypt and the East, 
two or three centuries ago, and so spread by degrees over 
Europe, may not this family-name, a little corrupted, be the 
very name they brought with them from the Levant ? It 
would be matter of some curiosity, could one meet with an 
intelligent person among them, to inquire whether, in their 
jargon, they still retain any Greek words : the Greek 
radicals will appear in hand, foot, head, water, earth, &c. 
It is possible that amidst their cant and corrupted dialect 
many mutilated remains of their native language might 
still be discovered. 
With regard to those peculiar people, the gipsies, one 
thing is very remarkable, and especially as they came from 
warmer climates; and that is, that while other beggars 
lodge in barns, stables, and cow-houses, these sturdy 
savages seem to pride themselves in braving the severities 
of winter, and in living suh dio the whole year round. 
Last September was as wet a month as ever was known ; 
and yet during those deluges did a young gipsy girl lie-in 
in the midst of one of our hop gardens, on the cold 
ground, with nothing over her but a piece of a blanket 
extended on a few hazel rods bent hoop fashion, and stuck 
into the earth at each end, in circumstances too trying for 
a cow in the same condition : yet within this garden there 
was a large hop-kiln, into the chambers of which she might 
have retired, had she thought shelter an object worthy her 
attention. 
Europe itself, it seems, cannot set bounds to the rovings 
of these vagabonds : for Mr. Bell, in his return from Pekin, 
met a gang of these people on the confines of Tartary, who 
were endeavouring to penetrate those deserts and try their 
fortune in China. ^ 
Gipsies are called in French, Bohemiens, in Italian and 
modern Greek, Zingari. 
' See Bell's Travels in China.- -G. W. 
