Obituary Notices. 
Xlll 
same qualities which distinguish the writer’s maturer labours — 
fulness of information, clearness of statement, soberness of 
judgment, and a dignified courtesy which ever ruled the pen as well 
as the speech and bearing of Mr Skene. 
It was in 1859 that Mr Skene became a member of the Royal 
Society. A valuable paper by him, afterwards printed in The Four 
Ancient Boohs of Wales (vol. i. p. 141), on “The Celtic Topography 
of Scotland, and the Dialectic Differences indicated by it,” was read 
before the Society in 1865, and printed in vol. xxiii. of its Trans- 
actions. He joined the Society of Antiquaries in 1831 ; became a 
vice-president of that Society in 1852 ; and was throughout a 
frequent contributor to its Proceedings. Papers from his pen on 
linguistic, literary, genealogical, and historical subjects appear 
frequently from 1852 till 1886. Some of the early papers — e.^., 
“ On Ancient Gaelic Inscriptions in Scotland ” {Proceedings of the 
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland^ vol. i. p. 81), “On the Ogham 
Inscriptions on the Hewton Stone ” (Ibid., v. 289) — are now super- 
seded. Others — e.g., “ The Earldom of Caithness ” (/5^(i., xii. 571) 
and “ The Authenticity of the Letters Patent said to have been 
granted by King William the Lion to the Earl of Mar in 1171 ” 
{Ibid., xii. 603) — are reprinted as appendices in Celtic Scotland 
(vol. hi. 441, 448). An elaborate treatise on “The Coronation Stone” 
{Proc. Soc. of Ant. of Scot., viii. p. 68) was afterwards published 
separately. The greater number of these valuable papers are special 
studies on obscure points in Scottish history and bibliography, the 
conclusions arrived at being, as a rule, accepted as established in the 
author’s more elaborate works. 
The services of Mr Skene to Celtic history and literature may 
well be termed great. The fact that a man of his ability and 
culture set himself resolutely to study the Celtic dialects as an 
essential preliminary to the investigation of the history of the tribes 
who spoke these dialects, gave an importance and a distinction to 
these studies which, in this country, they much needed but did not 
always receive. He cannot, indeed, be said to have expelled the lin- 
guistic charlatan from his chief stronghold on European soil. We 
have still among us educated men who will undertake to explain 
obscure Gaelic names without learning to decline a Gaelic noun, and 
to correct Highland maps though they cannot spell a Gaelic word. 
