SLIDING SCALE-SLING. by a railway, which is a branch of the Midland Great Western, and connects the county town of Sligo (q. v.) with Dublin. The mineral products of the county, although not very rich, are various, and consist of copper, lead, iron, and manganese. The climate is variable, and although rain is frequent, it is, on the whole, mild and healthy. The soil in the north is mossy and sandy, both being occasionally intermixed. and at times alternating with a gravelly loam. The plain of S. is a deep rich loam; and in the southern portion of the county are found large tracts of corn-land and pasturage. The occupations of the people are mainly agricultural, and, until some years back, they were chiefly engaged in tillage; but the land is now chiefly used for pasturage. The number of acres under crops of all kinds in the year 1862 was 103,301. The cattle in that year numbered 76,226; sheep, 44,717; and pigs, 18,062. The number of holdings ten years before 1852 had been 13,992, which is now somewhat reduced. The extent of coast-line has led a considerable number of the population to engage, at least partially and occasionally, in fishing. The S. fishery district comprises 112 miles of coast, and keeps engaged upwards of 200 registered vessels, employing more than 1200 men and boys. The principal towns are Sligo (q. v.), Ardnaree, and Tobercurry. The number of pupils attending the national schools throughout the county in 1864 was 8734, distributed over about 100 schools. two lines of logarithmic tangents, a third line of logarithmic sines, and a line of versed sines. Of these, one line of logarithmic sines and one of tangents are upon the slider. The scale in most common use is that of numbers, and a description of the way in which it is used will give a key to the whole working of the instrument. It is necessary, however, to notice as a preliminary, that the scale of numbers is not evenly divided, as in this case only addition and subtraction could be performed, but is divided in proportion, not to the numbers, but to their logarithms, so that 3, whose logarithm is very nearly the half of that of 10, stands almost halfway between 1 and 10; and similarly of the other numbers. All questions of numerical proportion can thus be easily worked by means of the line of numbers on the slider, and the adjacent and corresponding one on the fixed part of the rule. To find a fourth proportional to three given numbers, we place the first term (on the slider) opposite to the second term (on the fixed scale), and opposite the third term (on the slider) is the fourth or number required (on the scale). Multiplication is performed by making 1 the first term of a proportion, and division by making it the second or third. The other scales marked on the rule are useful in the solution of trigonometrical, geographical, and nautical problems, and the results obtained are much more accurate than one at first sight would believe. Sliding rules of circular form have been made by the French, but they are not in any way preferable to the ordinary straight form. SLIDING SCALE, a provision in some of the statutory restrictions formerly in force on the trade in corn, by which, in order to encourage importation when prices were high, and discourage it when low, the import duty was diminished as the price rose, and at famine-prices grain came in duty free. By the act of 1828, wheat was allowed to be imported on payment of a duty of £1, 48. 8d. when the average price over England was 628. a quarter. For every shilling less of price, a shilling was added to the duty; and for a rise of price the duty decreased. SLIGO, chief town of the county of the same In 1842, while the agitation regarding the corn- name, situated on the river Garrogue; distant from laws was going on, Sir Robert Peel introduced and Dublin, with which it is connected by a branch from carried a modification of the Sliding Scale, which, the Midland Great Western Railway, 131 miles however, did not succeed in mitigating the popular north-west. The pop. in 1862 was 10,420; of whom hostility to the corn-laws. By the Sliding-scale Act 8242 were Roman Catholics, and 1557 Protestants of 1842, the duty per quarter was fixed at £1 when of the Established Church. S. had its origin in the the price of corn was under 51s., and diminished as erection of a Dominican abbey in the 13th c. by the price increased, till on the quarter of wheat Maurice Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, around which attaining the price of 738. it fell to 18. See CORN and a castle also built by him-a town was LAWS. SLIGO, a maritime county of the province of Connaught, Ireland, bounded on the N. by the Atlantic and the Bay of Donegal, S. by Roscommon and Mayo, E. by Roscommon and Leitrim, and W. by Mayo. It is 41 miles from east to west, and 38 from north to south; the total area comprising 461,753 acres, of which 290,696 are arable, while 151,723 are uncultivated. The pop. in 1861 was 124,845, of whom 112,436 were Roman Catholics, S. was anciently the seat of the O'Connors, and was the scene of many conflicts between the several branches of that family. The domestic feuds of the O'Connors were among the causes which facilitated the first inroads of the Anglo-Normans. The district contains many remains both of the Celtic and of the Anglo-Norman period. Of the former, there is one very interesting called the Giant's Cairn, near Sligo; and there are many raths, cromlechs, and ancient caverns. The county of S. sends two members to the imperial parliament. gradually formed. In the reign of James L., it and 10,438 Protestants of the Established Church. The coast-line is very irregular, and indented with numerous bays, and, except in the Bay of Sligo, is rocky and dangerous for navigation. The surface rises gradually from the coast eastwards as SLING, a weapon much in use before the introfar as an elevated range called Slieve Gamph and duction of firearms, consisted of a piece of leather, the Ox Mountains, the highest point of which rises with a round hole in the middle, and two cords of to 1800 feet. S. contains comparatively few and about a yard in length. A round pebble being unimportant lakes, but some of these, however, are hung in the leather by the cords, the latter were extremely picturesque, especially Lough Arrow and held firmly in the right hand, and swung rapidly Lough Gill. Only three of its streams are navigable round. When the stone had attained great speed, -the Moy, the Owenmore, and the Garrogue, and one string was disengaged, on which the stone flew they are all inconsiderable. The county is traversed | off at a tangent, its initial velocity being the same as it had at the last moment of revolution. velocity gives far greater range and force could be imparted in mere throwing. SLIP-SLOTH. This 1707-1725), containing also an excellent account than of the topography, meteorology, and population of the island, which book was the means of introduSLIP, in a Dockyard, is a smooth, inclined cing into the Pharmacopoeia a number of excellent plane, sloping down to the water, on which a ship drugs, hitherto unknown. is built. It requires to have a very solid foundation. Among modern inventions is a slip on which a sort of truck runs on numerous rails. This truck is run under a ship as she floats; the water is diminished till she rests on it, and it is then hauled up the slip by steam power until she is high and dry. Such a slip takes the place of a dry dock. See also LAUNCH and SHIP-BUILDING. SLIPPED, in Heraldry, a term of blazon applied to a leaf, branch, or flower, which is represented with a stalk, and torn from the parent stem. SLOANE, SIR HANS, an eminent physician and been the chief of the Scottish colony which was naturalist, of Scotch parentage, his father having settled in Ulster by James I. of Great Britain, was born at Killyleagh, in County Down, Ireland, 16th April 1660. He devoted himself during his boy hood to natural history and medicine, and in spite of an attack of hemoptysis, which lasted from his 16th till his 19th year, he arrived in London in 1679, with an excellent knowledge of the first of these sciences, and a fair acquaintance with the second. His apprenticeship to Stafforth, a pupil of Stahl (q. v.), and the acquaintance, subsequently ripened into close friendship, which he formed with Boyle and Ray, two of the most celebrated naturalists of their time, did much to encourage and advance him in his favourite studies. During a brief sojourn in France, he attended the lectures of Tournefort and Du Verney, obtained on his return, by the active support of Sydenham (q. v.), a footing in London as a physician, and was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1685, and of the Royal College of Physicians in 1687; but in September of the latter year, he accompanied Monk, Duke of Albemarle, to Jamaica, and investigated the botany of that and the adjoining islands with such zeal and diligence during the 15 months of his stay, that his herbarium numbered 800 species. Resuming his professional practice on his return, he became physician to Christ's Hospital (1694-1724), President of the College of Physicians (1719-1735), Secretary to the Royal Society (1693), Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences (1708), and succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as President of the Royal Society in 1727. He had been created a baronet and physician-general to the army in 1716; and in 1727 received the further honour of being appointed royal physician. Though of remarkably delicate constitution, he lived to the great age of 92, dying at Chelsea, 11th January 1753. The chief point to be remarked in S.'s moral character was his benevolence, as shewn in the charitable to which he applied the whole of his salary as physician of Christ's Hospital, in his zealous promotion of the various schemes for affording medicine and attendance gratuitously to the poor, and his support of the Foundling Hospital, of which he was one of the founders. By long-continued perseverance, he succeeded in forming a most extensive museum of natural history, a library of 50,000 volumes, and 3560 MSS., which he directed to be offered at his death to the nation for £20,000 (about one-fourth of its real value), and which formed the commencement of the British Museum (q. v.). He also contributed numerous memoirs to the Philosophical Transactions, whose publication he superintended for a number of years. But his great work was the Natural History of Jamaica (fol. uses SLOBDO'SK, or SLOBODSKOI', a town of Russia, in the government of Viatka, is situated on the river Viatka, about 16 miles north-east of the town of the same name. Pop. 5914. SLOE, or SLOE-THORN (Prunus spinosa), a shrub of the same genus with the plum, and perhaps really of the same species with it and the bullace. It is generally a shrub of 4-10 feet high, sometimes becoming a small tree of 15-20 feet. It is much branched, and the branches terminate in spines. The youngest shoots are covered with a fine down. The flowers are small, snow-white, and and generally about the size of the largest peas. generally appear before the leaves. The fruit is ovate, or almost globose, pale blue with blackish bloom, and in arid places in Britain and almost all parts The S. is abundant in thickets and borders of woods, of Europe. The shoots make beautiful walkingsticks. Although spiny, the S. is not suitable for hedges, as its roots spread, and it encroaches on the fields. The bark is bitter, astringent, and tonic. The flowers, with the calyx, are purgative, and are in some places much used as a domestic medicine. The leaves are used for adulterating tea. unripe fruit dyes black. The fruit is very austere. It is much used on the continent of Europe for making a preserve, also in some places for making a kind of brandy. The An astringent extract, called German Acacia, is prepared from it, which was once much employed in cases of diarrhoea and mucous and bloody discharges. The juice is much used to impart roughness to port wine, and in the fabrication of spurious port. SLO'NIM, a town of Russian Poland, in the government of Grodno, and 72 miles south-east of the town of that name. It has large manufactures of cloth. Pop. 10,021. SLOOP is a one-masted cutter-rigged vessel, differing from a cutter, according to old authorities, in having a fixed bowsprit and somewhat smaller sails in proportion to the hull. The terms 'sloop' and cutter' appear, however, to be used nearly indiscriminately. In the British navy, a sloop-ofwar is a vessel, of whatever rig, between a corvette and a gun-boat, and ordinarily constituting the command of a commander. In the days of the sailing navy, sloops-of-war carried from 10 to 18 guns; but, with the introduction of steam, the number of guns has ceased to be distinctive. Within certain sive than necessaries' in the army. They comprise SLOPS, in the Navy, are somewhat more extenthe clothes and bedding of a sailor. limits, government, acting through the ship's paymaster, supplies the men with slops at cost price. the benefit of his representatives. When a sailor dies, his slops are sold by auction for SLOTH (Bradypus), a genus of mammalia, of the order Edentata, and family Tardigrada. The name was given from observation of the very slow and awkward movements of the animals of this genus on the ground; but a better acquaintance with their habits, and observation of their movements among the branches of trees, for which their conformation peculiarly adapts them, have shewn it to be by no means appropriate or descriptive. In like manner, Buffon's notion that they are creatures of imperfect organisation, and doomed to a miserable existence, has been completely exploded. Their structure, like that of every other creature, is admirably SLOTTING-MACHINE-SLUG. adapted to their mode of life. They feed on the is about two feet in length, of a uniform grayishleaves, buds, and young shoots of trees, amongst the brown colour, often with a reddish tint. The bestbranches of which they are born and spend their known species of THREE-TOED S. is the AI (Bradypus whole life, rarely and unwillingly descending to the or Acheus tridactylus), which is smaller than the ground. They do not walk upon the branches, Unau, has a more obtuse muzzle, and is generally but cling beneath them, with the back downwards. brownish gray, slightly variegated with hairs of The fore-legs are much longer than the hinder ones, different tints, the head darker than the body. All and are used for embracing a branch, or for drawing the sloths belong to the tropical parts of America. in the branches on the foliage of which they are to feed, and both the fore and hind feet are furnished slots, or square grooves, in metal. It is of great SLO'TTING-MACHINE, a machine for cutting with very long, curved, and sharp claws. pelvis is very wide; and the hind-legs, thus widely engineering, and many very The importance in mechanical separated, also diverge from one another. The ingenious inventions have structure of the wrist and ankle-joints is such that been made for facilitating the palm or sole is turned towards the body, so the process. The principle that upon the ground, the animal is compelled to is, however, very simple, and rest on the side of the hind-foot, whilst the length is the same in all. It conof the fore-legs causes it to rest on the knee or sists of a cutting tool, or elbow of them, struggling forward by a shuffling chisel, held very firmly in movement, and dragging itself along by stretching an arm, which is pressed out the fore-legs alternately and hooking the claws down and raised alternately. into the ground, or grasping some object. But in a The tool is thus made to dense tropical forest, sloths generally find it easy to pare off a thin portion of pass from the branches of one tree to those of the metal each time it deanother, often taking advantage for this pur- scends, until it has cut a Slotting-machine. pose of a time when branches are brought within slot of sufficient size. Water is continually thrown their reach by the wind. Where the trees are more on, to prevent the metal from becoming overheated distant from each other, they will eat up the by the friction. whole foliage of a tree ere they descend from it. The hair of sloths is coarse and shaggy, of a very peculiar texture, inelastic, and much like grass Three-toed Sloth (Bradypus trydactylus). Buckingham, 18 miles west of London, by the Great Windsor, which is distant about two and a half 3425. SLOVAKS, THE, are the Slavic inhabitants of North Hungary, who, in the 9th c., formed the nucleus of the great Moravian kingdom, but who, after the bloody battle of Presburg (907 A. D.), were gradually subjugated by the Magyars, to whom even yet they bear no friendly feeling. Their number is reckoned at 2,750,000, of whom 800,000 belong to the Protestant, the rest to the Catholic Church. The S., whose character probably comes nearest to that of the old Slavic type, travel in great numbers over Germany and Poland as pedlars. Their language is a dialect of Bohemian. Among the most notable of the Slovak authors are the poets Holly and Kollar (q. v.); Matth. Bel (1684 the first Slovak journal; Bernolak, author of a Slovak grammar; Palkovitsh (died 1835); and Tablitsh, who published four volumes of poetry (1806-1812). A fine collection of popular Slovak ballads has been published by Kollar (2 vols., Ofen, 1834). withered in the sun, but affords an excellent protection from insects, whilst it also gives them such an appearance that they are not readily observed except-1749); Stephan Leschka (1757-1818), editor of when in motion. The muzzle of sloths is short, and the tail is short. There are no incisor teeth, but sharp canine teeth, and eight molars in the upper, six in the lower jaw. The molars are cylindrical, penetrated by no laminæ of enamel, and adapted merely for crushing, not for grinding the food. For this, however, there is compensation in the stomach, which is somewhat imperfectly divided, by transverse ligatures, into four compartments, for the longer retention and more thorough digestion of the food, Although there is no rumination. The female sloth produces only one young one at a birth, which clings to its mother till it becomes able to provide for itself. The voice of sloths is a low plaintive cry. Their chief enemies are large snakes, but against these they defend themselves by their powerful fore-legs and claws. A sloth has been known to grasp a dog round the neck and strangle it. There are very few species. One species has the fore-feet furnished with only two toes: the others have three. These, with other differences, have been made the ground of a recent division of the genus into two. The TwoTOED S., or UNAU (Bradypus or Cholapus didactylus), SLOW-MATCH, a combustible material, such as cotton, hemp, tow, &c., often dipped in a solution of nitrate of potash (saltpetre), and formed into a thin rope. It is used for exploding gunpowder in various ways, on account of its slow, steady way of burning, a sufficient length being taken to enable the operator to remove to a safe distance before the explosion. Slow-match was much used by artillerymen for firing of cannon, but it has generally given way to friction fusees and percussion caps. SLUBBING. See SPINNING. SLUG (Limax), a genus of gasteropodous molluscs, of the division Monacia (hermaphrodite), and of the family Limacide, which is closely allied to the snail family, Helicide, but has no external shell. There |