The mention of plants used for the preparation of eye lotions reminds me of a curious expression used by a half-bred gypsy. I was telling her of a lady who suffered a good deal with an inflamed eye; the gypsy advocated eyebright or ground ivy as a cure, “for you know,” said she, “you can’t be too careful with the eye, it’s such a precious limb.” The gypsy faculty for using words of similar sound but of quite different signification from those intended, or of curious, home-made words, or inapplicable terms, is often productive of very whimsical statements, as the following extracts from my contemporary notes exemplify:— ... A gypsy, charged with using disgusting language in public, made a pathetic appeal to the magistrate against conviction for the offence as he was “certain sure he never used no unseen (obscene) language.” ... A gypsy girl, looking at a photograph in which the more distant figures in a group were somewhat indistinct, remarked “that she could hardly concern (discern) who it was standing there.” ... Upon mentioning the bombardment by the Germans of Rheims Cathedral to a gypsy, he expressed great indignation, and added, “that was a lovely church, I’ve seen a picture of it, it was all tattooed beautiful down the front.” ... “My sister’s gone to the dissumption hospital,” said a gypsy girl who evidently meant “consumption.” ... After asking a favour, an old gypsy woman, wishing to make it understood that she was in no great hurry, said, “I ain’t in no caddle about it.” ... The widow of a gypsy who had just died, asked a male friend if he would kindly act as a bearer at the funeral. The man, willing to help and anxious to condole, replied, “Oh yes, please God, I’ll be glad to,”—an unfortunate way of expressing his sympathy, for it admits equally of the interpretation that he would be glad of the opportunity to put the deceased out of the way. ... “Well, how do you like this (wet) weather?” I asked of an old gypsy acquaintance. “Oh, my dear,” she replied, “it’s awful, we’re reg’lar soakened out.” ... Upon one occasion when photographing at a gypsy camp, one of the men, who had obviously spent a good deal of that day in endeavouring to quench a troublesome thirst and was in consequence rather quarrelsome, broke in upon the scene, exclaiming, “You can’t come here and take my kid’s fortygraph without commission (permission), so I tells yer.”