Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/261

* SKIING. 215 SKIN. quarter of an inch thick, and as wide as the sole of the foot. The toe end of it is sloped gradually upward, to avoid obsta- cles, and narrows to a point at its extreme limit; those used by women are a trille shorter than the men's. A shallow groove about one- eighth of an inch deep and one inch wide is cut in the under surface or palm, as it is called; this forms a slender ridge in the snow and prevents slipping. Sometimes the palm is left bare, some- times it is covered with skin, the hair on which acts as a grip in climbing hills; and sometimes with horn, which facilitates its down-hill glide. Midway on the top of the skin is a strap or laced tliong called the binding, with which the foot is held in position, and sometimes a lieel strap is used. Special shoes are worn made of thick soft leather, pointed and bent upAvard at the toes so as to fit the loop or bindinj;. The rider carries a tsiav, a strong wooden stick with a small wheel at the trailing end, by which he starts himself and steers. The motion differs from the step of the Indian snow-shoe ; it is a glide, zig-zagging up hill, and a slide or shoot down hill. Skiing is the common winter method of locomotion in Northern Europe, and is considerably used in Northwestern America, especially in the States of Minnesota and Wisconsin. The United States soldiers at the Yellowstone National Park find skis very useful in their patrols during the winter months. Both in Norway and America skiing is the oc- casion of great gatherings for competitions. In America the first ski club was formed in Minne- apolis in 1881 and other clubs soon followed. in 1800 a national association of clubs was or- ganized for the regulation of the annual tour- neys, called the Ski Association of the North- west. The greatest ski contests are those held at Holmenkollen and Frognersieteren, near Christiania, Norway, in February each year. At these there are contests in long and short dis- tance skiing runs and juiiiiiing. The long dis- tance run is generally about twenty miles, round trip. The jump is from a take-off erected mid- waj" down a sloping hillside, and when the slid- ing skiinan reaches it he stoops, rises in the air. and must, to be successful, land on his feet and keep his equilibrium to the end of the coarse. SKIMBACK. A local name in the Missis- sippi Valley for a fifeh, one of the most common of the carp-suckers iVarpiodcn ciiprini s), other- wise known as 'sailfish.' 'quillback,' etc. SKIMMER, or Scissobsbill. A sea-bird of the genus Ehynchops, related to the gulls, re- markable for having a bill of a straight, com- pressed, unequal form. The common skimmer of the North Atlantic (Rhynchops nif/ra) . which oc- curs in late summer as far north as the Bay of Fnndy, is about 19 inches long, spreading its wings 44 inches: and is black above and white below, with the legs and webbed feet red. and the bill orange and black. It breeds along coasts after the manner of gulls generally, and is eon- fined to the tropics in winter, ^■hen feeding the bird flies to the surface of the ocean, with the blade-like lower mandible under water, and plows through the water, skimming up its food. Two other species are .Asiatic. SKIM MILK. Milk after the cream has been removed by skimming or by the separator (q.v. ). It is largely used as a stock food, especially for young animals. During the clos- ing decade of the last century a substance called plasmon was made from it and placed upon the market. This is a flour-like material which contains a high percentage of proteids, and is used for liread and cracker making and for mixing with cocoa. SKIMTOLE, Harold. An amateur artist in Dickens's lllcril; Hdiihi-, plausible but selfish, who lived on his friends. He was supposed to be a portrait of Leigh Hunt, but Dickens emphatic- ally denied any such intention. SKIN (Icel. skiim; connected with OHG. scin- taii, sciiidaii, Ger. schiiiden, to flay). Considered in its general physiological and histological relation, the skin is merely a part of the great mucous sys- tem to which the mucous membrane and secret- ing glands also belong, and which consists of two essential elements, a basement tissue, composed of simple cutaneous membrane, and an epithelium of nucleated particles resting on it, while be- neath the basement membrane are vessels, nerves, and connective tissue. ( See Epithelium and Mu- cois Membr. e. ) In the skin the hard and thick epithelium is termed cuticle or epidermis, and the true skin below it is termed the fter/im, or coriiim or cutis vera, and is chiefly formed of modified and very dense connective (or areolar or cellular) tissue. The external surface of the skin formed by the cuticle is marked by furrows of difi'erent kinds. Some ( termed furrows of motion ) occur trans- versely in the neighborhood of joints, on the side of flexion; others correspond to the insertion of cutaneous muscles ; while others, of quite an- other kind, are seen in aged and emaciated per- sons, and after the subsidence of any great dis- tention of the integument ; and besides these coarse lines, most parts of the skin are grooved with very minute furrows, which assume various courses in relation to one another. These minute furrows are most distinctly seen on the palmar aspect of the hand and fingers, and on the sole of the foot. The outer surface of the skin also presents innumerable pores for the discharge of the contents of the sudoriparous and sebaceous follicles, or the sweat and fat glands; an<l the modifications of epidermis known as hair and nails occur on the same surface. The epidermis is composed of stratified epithelial cells united to each other by a cement substance. Its entire thickness varies from 0.08 to 0.12 of a micro- millimeter. The outermost layer is known as the stratum porneum, and is composed of several strata of dry. horny scales, without nuclei. Be- neath this lies the stratum lucidum. a thin, clear, transparent layer of horny cells with faint nuclei, and next beneath this lies the stratum ijranulo- sum- (or rete mucosum. or rete Malpighii), which overlies and dips into the spaces between the papillae of the coriiim. The Malpighian layer is composed of many strata of nucleated cells, which are flattened in the superficial layers, but polyhedral in the deep portion. The pigment of the skin is found in the rete Malpighii. The deep layer of the skin consists of connec- tive tissue, in which both the white and yellow fibrous elements are considerably modified as to the proportions in which they occur, and un- striped muscular fibre is present in no inconsid- erable quantity in some parts of the skin. Where