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." Again, in Pipe 3 Joh. "In liberatione constituta portario de Hereford, 30s. 5d."