inated at the great
slang-manufactory for the army, the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
You may depend upon the following account of it, which I had many
years ago from the late Thomas Leybourne, F.R.S., Senior Professor of
Mathematics in that college.

One of the Professors, Dr. William Wallace, in addition to his being a
Scotchman, had a bald head, and an exceedingly "broad Scotch" accent,
besides a not very delicate discrimination in the choice of his
English terms relating to social life. It happened on one hot summer's
day, nearly half a century ago, that he had been teaching a class,
and had worked himself into a considerable effusion from the skin. He
took out his handkerchief, rubbed his head and forehead violently, and
exclaimed in his Perthshire dialect,--"_It maks one swot_." This was
a God-send to the "gentlemen cadets," wishing to achieve a notoriety
as wits and slangsters; and mathematics generally ever after became
_swot_, and mathematicians _swots_. I have often heard it said:--"I
never could do _swot_ well, Sir;" and "these dull fellows, the
_swots_, can talk of nothing but triangles and equations."

I should have thought that the _sheer disgustingness_ of the
idea would have shut the word out of the vocabularies of English
_gentlemen_. It remains nevertheless a standard term in the vocabulary
of an English soldier. It is well, at all events, that future ages
should know its etymology.

T.S.D.

_Pokership_, (_ante_, pp. 185. 218. 269. 282. 323, 324.)--I am sorry
to see that no progress has yet been made towards a satisfactory
explanation of this office. I was in hopes that something better than
mere conjecture would have been supplied from the peculiar facilities
of "T.R.F." "W.H.C." (p. 323.) has done little more than refer to the
same instruments as had been already adverted to by me in p. 269.,
with the new reading {370} of _poulterer_ for poker! With repect to
"T.R.F.'s" conjecture, I should be more ready to accept it if he
could produce a single example of the word _pawker_, in the sense of
a hog-warden. The quotation from the Pipe-roll of John is founded on
a mistake. The entry occurs in other previous rolls, and is there
clearly explained to refer to the _porter of Hereford Castle_. Thus,
in Pipe 2 Hen. II. and 3 Hen. II. we have, under Hereford,

"In liberatione portarii castelli ... 30s. 5d."

In Pipe 1 Ric. I. we have,

"In liberatione constituta portarii de Hereford, 30s. 5d