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* SKATING. 210 SKELETON. is very light. With it lias come into popular favor the Norwegian skate, the best skate known, which has a similar blade, fastened permanently to the shoe by three metal pieces screwed to the sole. Its weight is but a few ounces. The hockey skate, a combination of the club and the Norwegian form, namely a short, thick, and straight-bladed skate screwed to the shoe, is another popular form. The style of skating in America has been not a little influenced by the speed-skate, which by its nature has added considerable grace to the stroke. The principle of this stroke is a gentle falling of the body from side to side, as either skate takes its position for the beginning of a stroke. The foot is pushed almost straight ahead, the blade striking the ice flatly, instead of beginning, as in the club-skate, with the toe. and ending, at the finish of the stroke, with the heel. In pushing off, therefore, with either foot, the whole length of the blade is obtained as a purchase instead of the toe only, as in the case of the club-skate. The re- sult is the greatest imaginable ease in skating. while the length of the stroke is two to three times as long, saving considerable energy. The competitions in figure-skating in the United States arc under the control of the Na- tional Association, founded in 1885, which acts in conjunction with the Canadian Amateur Skat- ing Association, founded in 1888, and the compe- titions for the championships are held annually, alternately in New York and Montreal. SKAW^ ska. The. The most northerly point of Denmark. See Skagen, Cape. SKEAT, Walter William (1835—). An English philologist. He was born in Park Lane, London, but passed his boyhood in Sydenham, a London suburb, then well in the country. It was here that he became familiar with the Kent- ish dialect. He attended King's College School, a school at Highgate, and entered Christ's Col- lege, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1858, and two j'ears later was elected a fellow. Ordained to the ministry in I860, he held two curacies, first at East Dereham in Norfolk, and then at Godalming in Surrey ; but, owing to an affection of the throat, he was compelled to give up the ministry. He returned to Cambridge, and resumed his studies in English philology and lit- erature. In 1873 he helped to found the English Dialect Societj', becoming its first director and afterwards its president. He had already be- gun editing Middle English texts for the Early English Text Society, established by his friend F. J. Furnivall. In 1878 he was appointed to the Erlington and Bosworth professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, and in 1883 he was reelected fellow of Christ's College. Among his separate publications may be mentioned The Songs and Ballads of XJhland, trans- lated from the German (1864); Lancelot of the Laik (1865; revised 1870); the three texts of Langland's Piers the Ploivman (1865- 84; reprinted together 1886) ; An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1879- 84) ; .4. Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (1882); Barbour's Bruce (1870-77: and for the Scottish Text Society, 1893-94) ; Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1894) ; The Student's Chaucer (1895) : A Stii- dent's Pastime, being a select series of articles reprinted from yotcs and Queries (1890); The Chaucer Canon (1900); Place Names of Cam- hridgeshire (1901); and Notes on English Etymology (1901). Skeat is one of the leading scholars in the revival of our older literature, and has done much to popularize his subject. To him more than to all others is due the very general interest in Chaucer. SKELETON ( from <rKeeT6v, skeleton, mummy, dried body, neu. sg. of (rueXerds, skcletos, dried, from (TK^Weiii, akellcin, to parch, dry up). The framework of hard structure which protects and supports the soft tissues of animals. The skele- ton either lies outside the soft tissues (exoskele- ton), or is imbedded within them (endoskeleton). Exoskeleton. Exoskeletal structures surround and shield the vital organs and muscles and are rejjresented by the shells or chitinous covering of mollusks, insects, and crustaceans, the shields of turtles, and the hair, scales, feathers, nails, and hoots ( qq.v. ) of other vertebrates ; also by the so- called "menibrane bones' of the skull. ]?hyloge- netically the exoskeleton of vertebrates is older than the endoskeleton. and its structures were de- rived from the inner layer of the epidermis. Endoskeleton. Endoskeletal structures appear in a few invertebrates (as the cuttlefishes, certain annelids, etc.), but are highly characteristic of vertebrates, in which arises a wholly new tissue — bone. Endoskeletal structures of vertebrates arise from two sources, the endoderm and the mesoderm, and are either membranous, cartila- ginous, or bony. In the lower vertebrates the conversion of cartilage into bone takes place on the outside and proceeds inward. In. the higher vertebrates ossification also takes place at certain internal centres. In the con- version of cartilage into bone the chondrin or matrix of the cartilage becomes converted into a calcified matrix. Tlie matrix is then dissolved away by certain cells called osteoclasts. Around the walls of the cavities thus produced certain cells, osteoblasts, arrange themselves in a layer and secrete about themselves salts ( carbonate and phosphate) of lime. The spaces occupied by these cells and their anifeboid processes become much restricted, but persist as the 'lacunse' and 'canali- culi' of bone. This calcified layer is in turn cov- ered over by another internal layer of osteoblasts, and these in turn by others, until a Haversian system with its concentric layers is produced. Bone is ahvays thus being torn down by the os- teoclasts and made over by the osteoDlasts. See Bone. The skeleton of vertebrates may be treated un- der two heads: (1) the axial and (2) the ap- pendicular skeleton. Vertebral Column. The axial skeleton in- cludes the vertebral column, ribs, sternum, and head-skeleton. The vertebral column, or 'back- bone,' first appears in cyclostomes. where it oc- curs as fibrous tissue, surrounding the notochord, which thus conies to lie as a rod in the axis of the primitive vertebrate column and is known as the 'skeletogenous layer.' From this point on it be- comes a more and more important organ, while the chorda takes less and less part in the com- position of the body of the adult. In the lowest vertebrates the skeletogenous layer is replaced at intervals by cartilage, which forms arches around the neural canal. In ganoids and higher forms these consist of five cartilaginous pieces for