NELSON COLLEGE OLD BOY’S SUCCESS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 2 August 1924, Page 5

NELSON COLLEGE OLD BOY’S SUCCESS

MR It D SKINNER'S RESEARCH

WORK

Mr 11. D. Skinner, B A., Lecturer on Ethnology at the University ct' Otago, has recently had his work on the “Morioris of the Chatham Islands” printed, and published as a memoii by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum of Honolulu, Hawaii. 1 In a. fine quarto volume of some 170 pages and copiously illustrated, Mr Skinner has dealt with the history, social organisation, material culture* etc., of these remarkable people of whom only a remnant of three remain. , Mr Skinner is an old boy of Nelson College, and was, also, later on a member of the teaching staff. In the great war he saw considerable service both at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, gaining a D.C.M. on the former field. He was wounded in France on several occasions and being rendered unfit for further!, service, took up the study cf anthropology at Cambridge, gaining his diploma in that subject. Mr Skinner who had already his B.A. degree from the N.Z. University, _iias now been granted the same degree by Cambridge for his research work, the authorities stating the opinion chat ><- is a contribution to learning,” a formula used only in respect-of. results-of particularly high! character. His numerous papers to ethnological journals on subjects relating to Maori life and culture, have given him a high rank as an authority. At the forthcoming meeting of the i Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science to be held in Adelaide at the end of the present month, he has been chosen as President of the Ethnological Section. At ■ the Otago Museum, of which Mr Skinner is assistant curator, the section devoted to the material culture of the Maori under his personal oversight contains .the valuable collections of Hocken. Chapman, Murdoch, Teristdale and others, the classification and setting out of which is highly creditable and it is largely, mvping to his efforts, which have been backed up by geneorus benefactors, that the ethnological division how contains probably the finest collection of stone and bone Maori artefacts in the Dominion.