CONTENTS.

PAGE.

Vipers and SnakesGenerally

7

White of Selborne on theViper

10

White of Selborne onSnakes

17

Snakes Swallowing theirYoung

23

Snakes Swallowing theirYoung

25

Snakes CharmingBirds

30

Mr. Frank Buckland onEnglish Snakes

31

Mr. Gosse on the JamaicaBoa Swallowing her Young

33

American Snakes

36

American ScienceConvention on Snakes

36

Charles Waterton as aNaturalist

39

Romanism

49

John Stuart Mill: aStudy.

His Religion

69

His Education

82

A Crisis in his History

90

His Wife

97

Mill and Son

105

Simson’s History ofthe Gipsies

111

Mr. Borrow on theGipsies

112

The Scottish Churches andthe Social Emancipation of the Gipsies

150

Was John Bunyan aGipsy?

157

The Duke of Argyll on thePreservation of the Jews

161

Index

171

Appendix.

I.

John Bunyan and the Gipsies

183

II.

Mr. Frank Buckland and White ofSelborne

187

III.

Mr. Frank Buckland on theViper

192

IV.

The Endowment of Research

199

FOOTNOTES.

[7] These two letters, dated the 5th and 19th of May, 1882, were in answer to a short one from a clergyman of the Church of England, acknowledging the receipt of a copy of my Reminiscences of Childhood, etc., which contained an Appendix on John Bunyan and the Gipsies.

[11a] The text represents the article as originally written.

[11b] I endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to get another reading of this book before saying that “no reference was made in it to mine.” I alluded, from memory, to my part of it. On examination I find that the only indirect reference to it is the following:—“Mr. Simson, in his History of the Gipsies [that is, in the Disquisition on the Gipsies] asserts that there is not a tinker or scissors-grinder in Great Britain that cannot talk this language; and my own experience agrees with his declaration, to this extent—that they all have some knowledge of it, or claim to have it, however slight it may be,” (p. 4). I did not express myself so absolutely as represented by Mr. Leland, who did not see fit to mention the double authorship of the book; the subject of which I took up from where it was left by Walter Simson. This double authorship may prove a little confusing to the reader when the book is alluded to.

[11c] See second note at page 19.

[12] In The English Gipsies, etc., Mr. Leland writes:—“I asked a Copt scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, ‘La, ana Gipti’ (‘No, I am a Copt’) pronouncing the word Gipti, or Copt, so that it might readily be taken for ‘Gipsy.’ And learning that romi is the Coptic for a man, I was again startled; and when I found tema (tem, land) and other Romany words in ancient Egyptian (vide Brugsch. Grammaire, etc.) it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this strange language.” Of some Egyptian Gipsies Mr. Leland says that “they all resembled the one whom I have described . . . They all differed slightly, as I thought, from the ordinary Egyptians in their appearance” (p. 193).

[14] Tacitus makes Caius Cassius, in the time of Nero, say:—“At present we have in our service whole nations of slaves, the scum of mankind, collected from all quarters of the globe; a race of men who bring with them foreign rites, and the religion of their country, or probably no religion at all.”—Murphy’s Translation.

[15] Perhaps the most interesting scene connected with the Gipsy language in Scotland, given in the History, is that at St. Boswell’s (pp. 309–318). The word “Tinkler,” assumed by and applied to the Scotch Gipsies, seems to have been used from a desire to escape the legal responsibility attaching to the word “Gipsy.”