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which is partly owing to the construction of the skates. They are too much curved in the surface which embraces the ice, consequently they involuntarily bring the users of them round on the outside upon a quick and small circle; whereas the skater, by using skates of a different construction, less curved, has the command of his stroke, and can enlarge or diminish the circle according to his own wish. 'Edinburgh,' says a Scottish writer, has produced more instances of elegant skaters than perhaps any other city or country; and the institution of a Skating Club, about fifty years ago, has contributed much to the improvement of this elegant amusement.' A gentleman of that club, who has made the practice and improvement of skating his particular study, gives the following instructions to beginners:-Those who wish to be proficients should begin at an early period of life, and endeavour to throw off the fear which always attends the commencement of an apparently hazardous amusement. They will soon acquire a facility of moving on the inside: when they have done this, they must endeavour to acquire the movement on the outside of the skates; which is no

thing more than throwing themselves upon the outer edge of the skate, and making the balance of their body tend towards that side, which will necessarily enable them to form a semicircle. In this, much assistance may be derived from placing a bag of lead shot in the pocket next to the foot employed in making the outside stroke, which will produce an artificial poise of the body, which afterwards will become natural by practice. At the commencement of the outside stroke, the knee of the employed limb should be a little bended, and gradually brought to a rectilinear position when the stroke is completed. When the practitioner becomes expert in forming the semicircle with both feet, he is then to join them together, and proceed progressively and alternately with both feet, which will carry him forward with a graceful movement. Care should be taken to use very little muscular exertion, for the impelling motion should proceed from the mechanical impulse of the body thrown into such a position as to regulate the stroke. At taking the outside stroke, the body ought to be thrown forward easily, the unemployed limb kept in a direct line with the body, and the face and the eyes directly looking forward: the unemployed foot ought to be stretched towards the ice, with the toes in a direct line with the leg. In the time of making the curve, the body must be gradually and almost imperceptibly raised, and the unemployed limb brought in the same manner forward; so that, at finishing the curve, the body will bend a small degree backward, and the unemployed foot will be about two inches before the other, ready to embrace the ice and form a correspondent curve. The muscular movement of the whole body must correspond with the movement of the skate, and should be regulated so as to be almost imperceptible to the spectators. Particular attention should be paid in carrying round the head and eyes with a regular and imperceptible motion; for nothing so much diminishes the grace and elegance of skating as sudden jerks and exertions, which are too

frequently used by the generality of skaters. The management of the arms likewise deserves attention. There is no mode of disposing of them more gracefully in skating outside, than folding the hands into each other, or using a muff. There are various feats of activity and manoeuvres used upon skates; but they are so various that we cannot detail them. Moving on the outside is the primary object for a skater to attain; and, when he becomes an adept in that, he will easily acquire a facility in executing other branches of the art. There are few exercises but will afford him hints of elegant and graceful attitudes. For example, nothing can be more beautiful than the attitude of drawing the bow and arrow whilst the skater is making a large circle on the outside: the manual exercise and military salutes have likewise a pretty effect when used by an expert skater.'

SKEAN, n. s.

Sax. razene; Irish and Erse scian; Arab. siccan. A short sword; a knife. Any disposed to do mischief may under his mantle privily carry his head piece, skean, or pistol, to be always ready. Spenser.

The Irish did not fail in courage or fierceness, but,

being only armed with darts and skeines, it was rather an execution than a fight upon them.

Bacon's Henry VII. SKEG, n. s. Goth. skog, is a wood. A SKEG'GER. wild wood plum; a small, short kind of salmon. See below.

sick salmon that might not go to the sea; and, though they abound,,yet never thrive to any bigness.

Little salmons, called skeggers, are bred of such

SKEIN, n. s.

Walton's Angler.

Fr. escaigne; Germ. schien. A

knot or hank of thread.

Why art thou then exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleyed silk, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse? Shakspeare.

by the right thread, not ravelled or perplexed. Then all is a knot, a heap.

Our stile should be like a skein of silk, to be found

Ben Jonson. Besides, so lazy a brain as mine is, grows soon weary when it has so entangled a skein as this to unwind. Digby.

SKELETON, n. s. Lat. sceleton; Gr. σKEλETOC. The bones of an animal body; such bones preserved together as much as can be in their natural situation; a collection of the principal parts of any thing.

the heavenly and elementary bodies, are framed in The great structure itself, and its great integrals, such a position and situation, the great skeleton of the world.

Hale.

When rattling bones together fly, From the four corners of the sky; When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread, Those cloath'd with flesh, and life inspires the dead. Dryden.

Though the patient may from other causes be exceedingly emaciated, and appear as a ghastly skeleton, covered only with a dry skin, yet nothing but the ruin and destruction of the lungs denominates a consumption.

Blackmore.

be analyzed in a sort of skeleton, and represented upon The schemes of any of the arts or sciences may tables, with the various dependencies of their several parts.

Watts.

I thought to meet, as late as heaven might grant, A skeleton, ferocious, tall, and gaunt,

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miles distance. Large flocks of puffins visit it. They arrive in one night and depart all together in another. 2. A village of Ireland, on the coast of Dublin, so named from the above islands, seventeen miles from Dublin. 3. Three islands of Scotland, among the Shetland islands, twenty-five miles north-east of Whalsay, and twenty from Mainland. In 1792 they contained eleven families, consisting of seventy inha

SKELETON, in anatomy, the dried bones of any animal joined together by wires, or by the natural ligament dried, so as to show their position when the creature was alive. See ANATOMY. There is in the Philosophical Transactions an account of a human skeleton, all the bones of which were so united as to make but one articulation from the back to the os sacrum and down-bitants. wards a little way. On sawing some of them, where they were unnaturally joined, they were found not to cohere throughout their whole substance, but only about a sixth of an inch deep all round. The figure of the trunk was crooked, the spinæ making the convex, and the inside of the vertebræ the concave part of the segment. The whole had been found in a charnel-house, and was of the size of a full grown person.

SKELTON (John), an English poet of the fifteenth century, usually styled poet laureat, having been laureatus, or invested with the laurel, at Oxford, a poetical degree then conferred. He entered into orders, and was made rector of Diss, in Norfolk; but, as Wood says, he was fitter for the stage than the pulpit; for he was suspended by his bishop for some loose compositions. After this he satirised cardinal Wolsey, who persecuted him with such violence that he took refuge in Westminster Abbey. He died in 1529. He left many works. The chief

are his Poemata et Satiræ.

SKEP, n. s. Lower Sax. rcephen, to draw. A sort of corn basket, narrow at the bottom, and wide at the top.

A pitchforke, a dougforke, seeve, skep, and a bin

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Blackmore.

Nature's extended face, then, scepticks say,
In this wide field of wonders can you find
No art?
With too much knowledge for the sceptick's side,
With too much weakness for the stoick's pride.
Man hangs between.
Pope's Essay on Man.

May the Father of mercies confirm the sceptical and wavering minds, and so prevent us, that stand fast, in all our doings, and further us with his continual help. Bentley.

The dogmatist is sure of every thing, and the sceptick believes nothing. Watts's Logick. SKERRIES, a name applied to certain low rocky islands, among the northern and western isles of Scotland and Ireland: as, 1. Three small islands of Ireland, on the coast of the county of Dublin, Leinster; remarkable for producing great quantities of sea-ware, from which kelp is manufactured. On one of these islands there is a light house, which is seen at twenty-four

SKETCH, n. s. & v. n. Lat. schedula, or Belg. schets, of Goth. skyta, to throw out. An outline; rough draught; first plan to draw in outline; to plan. The reader I'll leave in the midst of silence, to contemplate those ideas which I have only sketched and which every man must finish for himself. Dryden's Dufresnoy.

I shall not attempt a character of his present majesty, having already given an imperfect sketch of it.

Is by ill colouring but the more disgraced,
As the lightest sketch, if justly traced,
So by false learning is good sense defaced.

Addison.

Pope:

If a picture is daubed with many glaring colours, the vulgar eye admires it: whereas he judges very contemptuously of some admirable design, sketched out only with a black pencil, though by the hand of Raphael. Watts's Logick.

SKEW'ER, n. s. & v. a. Dan. skere; Goth. and Swed. skef. A wooden or iron pin, used to keep meat in form: to fasten with skewers. Sweetbreads and collops were with skewers prick'd About the sides. Dryden's Iliad.

I once may overlook
A skewer sent to table by my cook.

King

From his rug the skewer he takes, And on the stick ten equal notches makes. Swift. Send up meat well stuck with skewers, to make it look round; and an iron skewer, when rightly employed, will make it look handsomer.

Id. Directions to the Cook. SKIDDAW, a mountain of Cumberland, England, and one of the greatest eminences of the island. It is distinguished for its romantic and grand scenery, as well as for the lakes in its hollows, and near its base.

According to colonel Mudge's trigonometrica. survey, the highest point of Skiddaw is 3022 feet above the level of the sea: Sea-fell, in the same county, is 3166 feet in height. Its surface also presents a variety of substances, colors, and forms in some places are vast masses of bare rock; in other parts a soft short grass presents itself; and in others are heath, furze, and brambles. Wildness and grandeur are the general features. Mrs. Radcliffe gives an interesting description of different parts of this mountain, in her Journey through Holland, &c., 2 vols. 8vo., 1795. See also West's Guide to the Lakes, 8vo., 1802; and Gilpin's Observations on Picturesque Beauty, and on the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, 2 vols. 8vo., 1786.

SKIFF, n. s. Fr. esquife; Span. esquif; Lat scapha. A small light boat.

If in two skiffs of cork a loadstone and steel de placed within the orb of their activities, the one doth not move, the other standing still; but both steer into each other. Browne.

In a poor skiff he passed the bloody main, Choaked with the slaughtered bodies of his train.

On Garraway cliffs

Dryden.

A savage race, by shipwreck fed, Lie waiting for the founder'd skiffs, And strip the bodies of the dead. Swift. SKILL, n. s. & v. n.}. Isl. skill; Swed. skel, SKILFUL, adj. skiel, of Goth. skil; skiSKIL'FULLY, adv. lia, is to discriminate; SKIL FULNESS, n. s. (distinguish. Knowledge SKILL'ED, adj. Jor in dexterity; or aptitude in any pracSKIL'LESS. artfulness used by Hooker for the art itself: to skill is, according to its primitive sense, to distinguish; make difference; to be knowing in, be dexterous at; but this verb is obsolete: skilful and skilled mean knowing, dexterous; able; taking of, at, and in, before the object; the adjective and noun substantive correspond: skilless is destitute of skill.

His father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold and silver. 2 Chron. ii. 14. The overseers were all that could skill of instruments of musick. Id. xxxiv. 12.

He fed them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. Psalm 1xxviii. 72. They shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation, to wailing.

Amos v. 16.

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Break all the wax, and in a kettle or skillet set it over a soft fire. Mortimer's Husbandry. Properly to scum, from Fr. scum, escume. -Johnson. But there

SKIM, v. a. & v. n. SKIM'MER, n. s. SKIM'MILK.

is a Gothic skyma, and Islandic skima, meaning to glide along. To take the scum clear off from the upper part, by passing a vessel a little below the surface; take by skimming; glide over the surface; cover superficially (improper): as a verb neuter, to pass lightly; glide along: a skimmer is a vessel used in skimming: skimmilk, that from which the cream has been taken. She boils in kettles must of wine, and skims With leaves the dregs that overflow the brims. Dryden.

Id.

His principal studies were after the works of Titian, whose cream he had skimmed. Id. Dufresnoy. The swallow skims the river's wat'ry face. Dryden. Dangerous flats in secret ambush lay, Where the false tides skim o'er the covered land, And seamen with dissembled depths betray. Wash your wheat in three or four waters, stirring it round, and with a skimmer, each time, take off the light. Mortimer. Then cheese was brought; says Slouch, this e'en shall roll;

This is skimmilk, and therefore it shall go. King. Thin airy shapes o'er the furrows rise,

A dreadful scene! and skim before his eyes..

Addison.

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SKIM-COULTER, in rural economy, coulter invented by Mr. Ducket, for paring off the surface of coarse grass or other lands, and placing it in the bottom of the furrow. It has been used in different districts with great advantage, and is stated in the agricultural report of Hertfordshire to be of excellent effect in cloverlays, and wherever any rubbish is on the land that wants burying, as well as in breaking up old saintfoin lays.

The SKIM-COULTER PLOUGH has a skimcoulter of some kind or other attached to it. See PLOUGH.

SKIM-MILK, in rural economy, the milk left after the cream has been taken away or skimmed off. This process is performed by means of a thin skimming-dish, after the milk has been set by for some time in shallow vessels, and when it has undergone, in some cases, the operation of scalding. Where the latter practice is followed, though it might be supposed that all the oily unctuous matter of the milk would be brought to the surface, it is found by experience in De

vonshire that that is not the case; but that, on the contrary, the scalded skimmed-milk is much richer, and better even for the purpose of suckling calves, as well as capable of making far

better cheese than raw skimmed-milk. A num

ber of trials have shown that in forming skimmilk, about ten ounces of butter is taken from twelve pints of milk, under the scalding practice. See DAIRY.

SKIM-MILK CHEESE, is cheese made from skimmed-milk. It is mostly an inferior sort of cheese, though much of it is made in different districts. It is, however, frequently a practice to take away the cream from only a certain portion of the milk that is intended for cheese, as that

of the night meal, &c. In Devonshire, when cheese is to be made, much care is taken that the milk be not heated so far as to produce bubbles under the cream.

SKIN, n. s. & v. a. SKINNED, adj. SKIN'NY.

Sax. rein; Dan. skind; Goth. and Swed. skin, of Goth. skya, to cover. The outward covering of the flesh: to flay; strip of skin; cover with skin, or superficially: skinned and skinny mean, having or abounding in skin; lean; thin.

It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen.

Authority, though it err like others, Has yet a kind of medicine in itself, That skins the vice o' the' top.

Shakspeare.

Id. Measure for Measure.

Her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips.

On whose top he strowed

Id. Macbeth.

A wilde goat's shaggy skin; and then bestowed
His own couch on it.
Chapman.

The body is consumed to nothing, the skin feeling rough and dry like leather. Harvey on Consumption. The beavers run to the door to make their escape, are there entangled in the nets, seized by the Indians, and immediately skinned. Ellis's Voyage.

The priest on skins of offerings takes his ease, And nightly visions in his slumber sees. Dryden's Eneid. The wound was skinned; but the strength of his Dryden. thigh was not restored.

We meet with many of these dangerous civilities, wherein 'tis hard for a man to save both his skin and L'Estrange. not to the bottom of the sore. It only patches up and skins it over, but reaches Locke.

his credit.

Lest the asperity of these cartilages of the windpipe should hurt the gullet, which is tender, and of a skinny substance, these annulary gristles are not made round; but, where the gullet touches the windpipe, there, to fill up the circle, is only a soft membrane, which may easily give way. Pay on the Creation. What I took for solid earth was only heaps of rubbish, skinned over with a covering of vegetables.

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ment, is made with the knees and sinews of beef, but circle, he was so careless of them, that many, of long boiled: jelly also of knuckles of veal. Bacon's Natural History. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers,

Cries old Sym, the king of skinkers.

Ben Jonson.

His mother took the cup the clown had filled : The reconciler bowl went round the board, Which, emptied, the rude skinker still restored.

Dryden. SKINNER (Stephen), an English antiquarian, born in 1622. He travelled and studied in several foreign universities during the civil wars; and in 1654 returned and settled at Lincoln, where he practised physic with success until 1667, when he died of a malignant fever. His works were collected in folio in 1671, by Mr. Henshaw, under the title of Etymologicon Lingua Anglicanæ, &c.

SKINNER (Rev. John), the son of a country schoolmaster in Aberdeenshire, of the same name, born the 3d of October, 1721, was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and intended by his father (a man of very considerable talents, and of great respectability) for the ministry of the established church. Mr. Skinner displayed in very early life uncommon talents, and his father was flattering himself that he would rise to distinction in his native church; when he chose to attach himself to the episcopal communion, was ordained in the year 1742, and in November that year became minister of the episcopal congregation in Longside, near Peterhead, of which he continued pastor for sixty-five years. The bishops and clergy of the Scottish Episcopal communion were, for the greater part of that time, nonjurors, and subjected, by the penal laws of 1746 and 1748, to very great inconveniences. To these Mr. Skinner was equally subjected with his brethren, though there is no reason to suppose that, by becoming an episcopalian, he became a Jacobite; indeed, the contrary is well known; yet he bore his afflictions with great equanimity, and discharged the duty of his office with great courage and assiduity; for which, in the year 1753, he suffered six months imprisonment. Mr. Skinner's talents as a man of genius, and acquirements as a man of learning, considering his narrow circumstances, confined society, and numerous disadvantages, were very remarkable. He published at various times, anonymously, several controversial tracts, adapted to the circumstances of his adopted church; and, in the year 1757, A Dissertation on Jacob's Prophecy, humbly offered as a Supplement to the bishop (Sherlock) of London's admirable Dissertation on the same Text; which was highly approved by the learned bishop, and by other eminent biblical critics. In the year 1788 he published an Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, in 2 vols. 8vo., in a series of letters, which has obtained the approbation of very eminent men. His leisure hours and retired life Mr. Skinner amused by poetical composition. possessed more than ordinary proficiency in the composition of Latin verse; and some of his Scotch songs and ludicrous compositions, both Latin and Scotch, have attained the highest celebrity. This talent he exercised as a mere pastime. After his pieces had amused his little

He

He

which the effect is yet recollected, have been totally lost. His chief occupation, during his long life, was biblical criticism; he was a good Hebrew scholar, and an ardent supporter of the Hutchinsonian system of interpretation. died on the 16th of June, 1807, aged eightysix, in the house of the bishop his son, near Aberdeen and his posthumous works were published, with a memoir of his life, in 3 vols. 8vo., in 1809. They consist of 1. Letters addressed to Candidates for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church of Scotland; 2. A Dissertation on the Shechinah, or Divine Presence with the Church or People of God; 3. An Essay towards a literal or true radical Exposition of the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's; and, 4. Of Specimens of his Latin, English, and Scotch Poetry, serious and ludicrous. The opinions of Mr. Skinner will be variously estimated by various men: they were so in his own time, and among the members of his own communion. But all men will acknowledge that he was an ornament to that communion, and that his talents, his acquirements, and his virtues, might, in different circumstances, have raised him to the highest distinction. He was the object of great and just veneration among the people of his own charge, by far the greater part of whom he had baptised in infancy. It is remarkable, that, for upwards of fifty years, he preached extempore; employing little more than an hour, previous to the time of public worship, to select his subject, and arrange his matter and mode of treating it.

SKIP, v. n., v. a., & SKIPJACK, n. s. [n. s. SKIP'PER, SKIP PET. scape.-Johnson.

Ital. squittire; Fr. esquirer. I know not whether it may not come as a diminutive from Swed. skempa.-Thomson. To fetch quick bounds; pass by quick leaps; bound lightly or joyfully as a verb active, to miss; pass: a skip is a light bound or leap: a skipjack, an upstart: a skipper (Belg. schipper), the master or assistant of a skip or skiff: skippet, a small boat.

Was not Israel a derision unto thee? Was he found among thieves? For, since thou spakest of him, thou skippedst for joy.

Jer. xlviii. 27. He looked very curiously upon himself, sometimes fetching a little skip, as if he had said his strength had not yet forsaken him. Sidney.

A dainty damsel, dressing of her hair,
Upon the bank they sitting did espy
By whom a little skippet floating did appear.

Faerie Queene.

Let not thy sword skip one: Pity not honoured age for his white beard; He is an usurer. Shakspeare. Timon of Athens.

Pope Pius II. was wont to say that the former popes did wisely to set the lawyers a-work to debate, whether the donation of Constantine the Great to Sylvester of St. Peter's patrimony were good or valid in law or no: the better to skip over the matter in fact, whether there was ever any such thing at all or no. Bacon's Apophthegms. Sat with Pigwiggen arm in arm: The queen, bound with love's powerfulest charm, Her merry maids, that thought no harm, About the room were skipping.

At spur or switch no more he skipt, Or mended pace, than Spaniard whipt.

Drayton.

Hudibras.

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