Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/350

 and finally appear the Germans and Slaves, the two mightiest peoples of to-day.

In conjunction with these migrations of races, widely extended wanderings are apparent among the related divisions of the central or midland races, and especially of the Semites and Indo-Europeans, which wanderings are conjoined with the sad fate of the peoples concerned.

The fate of the Jews is well known, at present scattered over the whole world as traders and bankers. The Phœnicians played the same rôle in antiquity as the Jews in modern times; we find them everywhere at that time, wherever the country was open to commerce. The Armenians, among the Indo-Europeans, may be compared with the Semitic Jews. The migrations of the Armenians, who like the Jews have no particular fatherland and in great measure live by traffic, are in no way behind those of the Jews; besides, the history of both people has a great resemblance, as in large part their movements have been the result of religious persecution.

A people who have migrated widely are the notorious gypsies. According to their descent, the gypsies, who call themselves Roman, are Indian. They speak an idiom which finds a relative in the present dialect of India—the Enkelinnen of the noble Veda tongue. Indeed, there is impressed on this idiom a mixture of foreign elements from all the tongues of Asia and Europe, through whose areas the fugitives passed. We find in it Persian, Armenian, Greek, Magyar, Slavonic, German, and Roman terms, and increasingly as we follow the jargon westward. In every country that the gypsy has reached, he has picked up morsels and incorporated them in his own idioms. But these very philological fragments are of the greatest value to the student, as they surely indicate to him the road which the fugitive from the far East has pursued in his migration.

 

HE question of the usefulness and safety of vaccination as practiced in the principal cities of the United States is fairly settled. The general voice pronounces it both safe and useful. A small minority only of the intelligent refuse to acquiesce in the verdict, and comparatively few among the ignorant now refuse to test its benefits. In Europe, notably in England and Germany, the same can not be said. It is among the German population that even here the greatest prejudice exists, and in England there is at the present time a controversy going on, growing out of efforts to extend and enforce a compulsory