Among the more important articles in this Volume are the following: The Publishers beg to tender their thanks, for revising articles, to the Dean of Worcester; the Agentgeneral for Western Australia; the town-clerks or other officials of Warrington, Warwick, West Bromwich, Whitby, Workington, Yarmouth; to Professor ZAHN of Erlangen, for revising Tatian;' and to Mr D. L. MILLER, for the materials of 'Tunkers.' FLORIDA.. 792 120 WEST INDIA ISLANDS.................................................................... 614 INDIAN TERRITORY (WITH TEXAS IN VOL. X. p.149) WEST VIRGINIA................................................................... S wastika. See SVASTIKA. Swatow, a seaport of China which has been opened to foreign trade since 1869, stands at the mouth of the river Han, 225 miles E. of Canton, in the province of Khwang-tung. It is the seat of great sugar-refineries, and bean-cake and grass-cloth manufactures. Its trade has grown but slowly in 1869 it reached a total of £4,800,000, in 1889 of £5,170,000, and in 1890 £6,400,000. The imports, which are valued at two-thirds of the total amount, consist principally of bean-cake and beans (yearly average, £948,000), cottons (£755,000), opium (£695,000), rice (£145,000), metals, hemp, silks and woollens, and wheat. Sugar (£1,093,500 yearly on an average) forms the chief item amongst the exports; besides it tobacco, cloth and nankeens, joss paper, grasscloth (made from a kind of hemp fibre), and tea are sent abroad. Pop. 30,000. emphasis. It was specially condemned by the Mosaic law, was long punished by severe penalties, and is still an actionable offence in England (see below). By oaths are loosely understood many terms and phrases of a gross and obscene character, as well as those words the use of which specially implies profanity proper. Again, there is a legitimate use of imprecations and curses when intense hatred is to be expressed, and when it is justifiable. It is only taking the sacred name in vain that need be condemned, and we know how at my Uncle Toby's one oath the recording angel dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out for ever.' It is hardly necessary to say how natural it is for weak men of limited vocabulary, under the pressure of excitement, to seek for artificial strength or verification by employing irrelevant words that carry with them ideas of gravity or strength. Seafaring men and persons in command generally often use such expressions to add weight to their words, and some apology may be found for them in the fact that the persons with whom they have usually to deal have been so accustomed to their use as not to be readily inclined to obedience with. out them. Again, other and more imaginative men, alike in England and America, from the days of Rabelais until now garnish their talk with oaths as a mere exercise of verbal ingenuity, or by way of off-set to their conversation. How now?' said Ponocrates, you swear, Friar John;' 'It is only,' said the monk, but to grace and adorn my speech; they are colours of a Ciceronian rhetoric. Swaziland, a South African native state, lying on the west side of the Libomba Mountains, and forming geographically an intrusion into the east side of the South African Republic. It has an area of 6150 sq. m.; a pop. of 60,000 Swazis and (in 1892) about 1000 white men; and a trade valued at £70,000 through Natal, exclusive of what goes by way of Delagoa Bay. The independence of this little state was recognised by its powerful neighbours, the South African Republic To call God to witness is a thing natural enough and the British government, in 1884; but in 1890 on occasions of grave asseveration, as in giving it was agreed by all parties concerned that the witness in courts of law and the like, and it has white settlers, who are chiefly engaged in gold- been from the beginning a custom to take oaths on mining, should be governed by a joint administra-things sacred or august, as the head of the emtion of the Boer and British governments. The Swazis, a Zulu-Kaffir race, smelt copper and iron, and are noted for their wood-carving. Swearing, or PROFANE SWEARING, the habit of using the name or attributes of God in a light and familiar manner by way of asseveration or peror, the beard of the Prophet, the sword blade or hilt, and the gospels. Thomas Becket denounced John the Marshal of England for swearing on the troparium, a collection of versicles and sequences used in the service of the mass. We find oaths frequent enough among the Greeks and |