NATUEAL HISTORY OF SELEORNE. 
139 
who, with fierce lowings and menacing horns, drive the assailants quite 
out of the pasture. 
Even great disparity of kind and size does not always prevent social 
advances and mutual fellowship. For a very intelligent and observant 
person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but 
one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen. 
These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a 
lonely orchard, where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees 
an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered 
individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of 
complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs : while the horse 
would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution 
and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive com- 
panion. Thus, by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the 
vacant hours of the other : so that Milton, when he puts the following 
sentiment in the mouth of Adam, seem^ to be somewhat mistaken : 
" Much less can bird with heast, or fish with fowl, 
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape." 
I am, &c. 
LETTEE XXV, 
TO THE SAME. . 
Selborne, Oct. Ind, 1775. 
Deae Sie. — We have two gangs or hordes of gypsies which infest the 
south and west of England, and come round in their circuit two or three 
times in the year. One of these tribes calls itself by the noble name of 
Stanley, of which I have nothing particular to say ; but the other is 
distinguished by an appellative somewhat remarkable. As far as their 
harsh gibberish can be understood, they seem to say that the name of 
their clan is Curleople ; now the termination of this 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 gypsies, 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 gypsy girl lie in the midst of one of our hop-gardens, on 
the cold ground, with nothing over her but a piece of a blanket 
