6 OCTOBER 1923, Page 24

This learned volume, the last and smallest of a very

remark- able series, deals with sixteen dialects and argots used by small vagrant tribes, numbering in all about 100,000 persons. They are called gipsies, but apparently have no connexion with the European gipsies, who came from the north-west of India. The first tribe mentioned are the Pendharis, with whom, as " Pindarees," the reader of Indian history in the days of Wellesley and Hastings is familiar. They were bands of outlaws, of various races ; there are now only a few thousand of them. The thieves' slang used by many of these little tribes is analysed with care and compared with the slang current among the disreputable in Western countries.