Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/264

* SKINNER. 218 SKIKT DANCE. other songs arc John o' Badoiyon, The Marquis of Huntly's Keel, and The Old Man's tiong, all natural and sincere in tone and execution. Skin- ner was also sUilltul at Latin verse in the Horatian manner. Consult : Skinner's Theo- logical Works (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1809) with a biography by his son, John Skinner; and his Songs and 'I'oems, eil. by H. G. Reid (Peterhead, 185'J). Individual songs appear in collections like Ward's English Poets. SKIP. In music, a term denoting the progres- sion of a part by an interval greater than a second. SKIPJACK. ( 1 ) An oceanic fish ( Scorn- ieresox saurus) of the family Scombere.socidiE, called also '.saury' and 'billfish,' and in Great Britain 'skipper' and 'garonook.' The body is elongated, with the snout drawn out into a long bill. The scales are minute and deciduous. It is 18 inches long and is found in the temperate waters of the North Atlantic. The sauries travel in great schools, and when pursued by larger fishes often leap out of the water and skim along the surface for great distances. The flesh is good. See Plate of Needle-Fish, Pikes. ETC. (2) A fish {Pomolobus chrysochloris) of the Mississippi Valley, introduced into the Great Lakes through canals, and known there as 'blue herring.' It is closely related to the alewife (q.v. ), is about 12 inches long, and is a brilliant blue above, with the sides silvery. It is not good food, because excessively bony. It is also taken in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico. (3) The bluefish (q.v.). (4) The eutlass-fish (q.v.). SKIPJACK or Snapping Beetle. See Click- beetle. SKIPPER. A butterfly of the family Hes- periidir. (See Butterflies.) The skippers are usually rather small, but have stout bodies with an especially strongly developed thorax. Their wings are rather sliort, but very powerful, and the butterflies are very rapid and erratic in their movements. Both sexes have six legs adapted to walking. The family comprises more SWALLOW-TAILED SKIPPER. a, Butterfly, or 'bean leaf-roller' {Eudamun proteus); b, caterpillar: o> chr.vaalis in rolled up leaf. than 2000 species, of which nearly 200 occur in the United States. The caterpillars are cylin- drical and smooth, and generally possess large globular heads. The name 'skipper' is also ap- plied to the cheese maggot or 'cheese-hopper,' larva of I'iophila casei. See Cheese Insects. SKIP'TON. A market town in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Kngland. on the Aire, 1.5 miles northeast of Burnley (ilap: Engkind. D 3). It is the centre of a large cattle and sheep raising district and has manufactures of cotton and woolen goods. It has an old castle, a church in the late Perpendicular style, and a grammar school of the sixteenth century, restored in 1877. The niunii'ipalitv owns its water and gas works. Population, in UIOl, 12,000. SKIRMISH (OF., Fr. escarmouche, It. seara- mitvriti, formerly schermuzio, skirmish, from schermire, to fence, fight, from OHG. scirman, Ger. schirmen, to shield, defend, from OHG. scirm, scerm, Ger. Schirm, shield, shelter; prob- ably connected with Gk. a-Klpov, skiron, parasol, «■/«(£, skia, shadow, Skt. chayfi, shadow). Irregular engagements between small bodies of combatants are usually described as skir- mishes; and a company or a battalion of infantry extended so as to cover a wide area of ground is said to be in skirmishing or extended order. The art of skirmishing is one of the most important branches of the infantry soldiers' training, as well as the most difficult to acquire. It enables contact to be made with an enemy with the lowest possible percentage of loss. Skirmishing makes the individual the unit, and conseqviently much depends on the intelligence and resourcefulness of the individual soldier. In the United States the squad is the basis of ex- tended order, and men are trained to regard the squad as the unit from which they must never be separated ; or if their squad is broken up. or separated, to place themselves with the nearest squad and to act under the orders of its leader. See Tactics. Military. SKIRRET (probably a corruption of sugar- root or siigar-irort), Sinm iS'isarHm. A perennial plant of the natural order Umbelliferte, a native of China and .Japan, long cultivated for its tuberous, clustered, sweet, succulent, somewhat aromatic roots, which are used like salsify, and also to make a spirituous liquor. The plant, sometimes six inches long, and three-quarters of an inch thick, is propagated either by seed, divi- sion, or by small offsets from the roots. It is little used in the United States, but in Europe is more highly esteemed. SKIRT DANCE. A modern spectacular per- formance in which the dancer wears a skirt made very full and of a light and often gauzy material, so that, grasped by the fingers, it may be waved in accom])animent to varying steps and rhythmi- cal motions of the body. The dance has come to differ, with the gradual increase in the size of the skirt, from true dancing in that the steps are of less importance than the movements of the body, and especially of the arms, which produce the swirling eft'ect of the many yards of tisi?ue com- posing the skirt. Often the performer remains practically stationary. To increase the radius of the whirls of tissue, on all sides and above the head, and thus emphasize the eharact.eristie fea- ture of the dance, light sticks of a few feet in length, held in the hands and concealed in the garment, are often used by the dancer. The skirt dance was made popular in England by Miss Kate Vaughan. and was further developed, there and in the Ignited States, by Miss Sylvia Gre,v, Miss Lettv Lind. Miss Topsy Sindon. and others. In 1807 Jliss Loie Fuller, famous as a danseuse in both America and Europe, intro- duced the modification of the skirt dance known as the serpentine dance, in which the skirt is decorated so as to give peculiar serpentine ef-