N MEMORIAM. 



William. Skey, the late New Zealand Government Analyst, was bom 

 in London on the 8th April, 1835, and showed an early taste for chemistry, 

 especially in its bearing on agricultural pursuits. On his leaving school 

 he was put to learn practical farming, and, with his employer's son, 

 built a laboratory in his spare time, for the purpose chiefly of trying the 

 business of distilling spirits of wine from beet-root. A laige quantity of 

 the roots was contracted for, but, unfortunately, they were grown on 

 peaty soil, and consequently only contained a small percentage of sugar, 

 so that very little spirit was produced. This and other circumstances 

 led to the abandonment of the enterprise, and in 1860 Skey, along with 

 bis brother Henry (now in the Survey Office at Dunedin), emigrated to 

 New Zealand, where they spent some time on the Otago goldfields, which 

 were discovered at that time. 



Early in 1863 he was appointed Laboratory Assistant to the Geological 

 Survey of Otago under Dr. Hector, in place of Mr. Charles Searles Wood, 

 Associate of the Royal School of Mines, who received an appointment on 

 the Geological Survey of Victoria. Mr. Skey continued Analyst to the 

 Geological Survey Department of the colony for twenty-seven years, 

 until 1894, when he was nominally transferred to the Mines Department, 

 continuing, however, to work in the same old laboratory until within 

 six weeks of bis death, which occurred on the 4th October, 1900. 



For thirty-eight years Mr. Skey served the Government, and with 

 indefatigable industry applied his great talent for chemical research. 

 The Laboratory register when he left off work showed entries which 

 cover 12.416 separate analyses, more than ten thousand of which were 

 performed by Skey. Outside his laborious official duties he made many 

 original contributions to chemical science, such as improvements in 

 laboratory appliances ; the electrical properties of metallic sulphides ; 

 the discovery of the ferro-nickel alloy " awaruite " in the ultra-basic 

 rocks of West Otago, which is highly interesting as being the first recog- 

 nition of a meteoiic-like iron as native to our planet; the discovery 

 that hydrocarbon in oil-shales is chemically and not merely mechani- 

 cally combined ; the discovery of a remarkable colour-test for the pre- 

 sence of magnesia ; and the isolation of the poisons of many native shrubs. 

 His suggestions for purifying water-tanks in India, for the use of the 

 hot-air blow-pipe in the laboratory, and for the application of cyanogen 

 salts to gold-saving, were some of his early achievements, which are now 

 in piactical use all over the world. His discovery that fatty oils treated 

 with anilines form alkaloids hints at an important new departure in 

 organic chemistry. 



These and many other practical applications of Skey's chemical 

 talent are distinguished services to science, of which New Zealand 

 should be proud. Without much training Skey, possessing a natural 

 bent, developed by diligent labcur and hard study, attained to such a 

 position as to be recognised as one of the world's famous authorities in 

 certain branches of chemical science. 



In William Skey the colony has lost a good servant and an able 



scientific man. He used to say that chemistry, farming, and poetry 



were the three things he tock most interest in, and would sit up all 



night in the Laboratory composing and printing his poetical fragments 



with a hand type-press. 



