NATURE 



[May 6, 1875 



The Binary Star 2 2107. — This undoubted binary, 

 first measured by Struve in the year 1828, well merits 

 attention, and it may soon be possible to gain an idea of 

 the form of the orbit. The recent measures of Dem- 

 bowski and Barclay prove the angular velocity to be still 

 increasing, the accompanying diminution of distance 

 requiring pretty large telescopes to be brought into requisi- 

 tion for satisfactory observations. Dembowski calls aqj 

 principal component a 7th magnitude, bright yellow ; the 

 smaller one a 9th and dusky. This star is Herculis 197 

 (Bode), and its place for i875*o is in R.4-> i6h. 46m. 54s. ; 

 N.P.D., 61° 7'. 



High-latitude Phenomena. — Our correspondent 

 " H. F. C," who writes from San Francisco, California, 

 with regard to a statement in the recently-published 

 narrative of the " German Arctic Expedition," that " the 

 moon shone without setting for several days " in Novem- 

 ber, refers to a phenomenon which must necessarily occur 

 in circumpolar latitudes. As an illustration : In lat. 82° N. 

 and long. 60° W., near which position a part of the expe- 

 dition about to leave our shores is expected to winter, the 

 moon in December next will rise on the 8th, and will not 

 set until the i8th, attaining her greatest altitude above the 

 horizon at meridian passage on the 13th. The sun during 

 this interval is, of course, invisible in lat. 82° N,,but there 

 is continuous moonlight for between nine and ten days, 

 and similarly for other months during the Arctic winter. 



The Solar Eclipse, 1876, March 25.— This 

 eclipse will be a very similar one to that of March 1858, 

 which created so much interest in its passage across this 

 country : it will be annular, but in those parts of the 

 track of central line, where the augmentation of the 

 moon's geocentric semi-diameter is greatest, the eclipse, 

 though still annular (as in England in 1858), approaches 

 very near a total one. Vancouver Island is situate in 

 this track, which runs about centrally over it, as the fol- 

 lowing points will show : — 



Longitude 127° 6' W. 



„ 126 4 

 125 51 

 125 15 



„ 122 46 



Latitude, 48° 42' N. 



., 49 30 

 „ 49 40 



50 6 



51 So 



A direct calculation for the third of the above points, in 

 Vancouver Island, gives for the duration of the annulus 

 only 7*5 seconds, the middle at oh. 25m. 29s. local mean 

 time with the sun at an altitude of 44° : the apparent 

 semi-diameter of the moon is i"'5 less than that of the 

 sun. The central line subsequently traverses the Lesser 

 Slave Lake and Lake Athabasca, with slightly longer 

 duration of anntilus. The eclipse will be visible in its 

 partial phase in the position of the winter quarters at 

 which the British Arctic Expedition aims. 



The Minor Planet " Lydia." — M. Leverrier's Btcl- 

 letin International of April 29 contained a telegraphic 

 notice of the discovery of a supposed new member of the 

 minor planet group, at the Observatory of Toulouse, by 

 M. Perrotin, on the same morning, which in the following 

 Bulletin is recognised as No. no, Lydia, detected by M. 

 Borrelly at Marseilles on April 19, 1870 ; the ephemeris 

 {Berliner Jahrbuch) being much in error. The elements 

 of No. no, calculated by Dr. Oppenheim of Kdnigsberg, 

 and brought up with perturbations to 1874 {Astron. Nach., 

 No. 1,971), give a position for April 28, differing consider- 

 ably from that assigned by the observation at Toulouse ; 

 but if we apply a correction to the mean anomaly of 

 -1-1° 21' 57", the observed and computed longitudes agree, 

 and the latitudes differ only one minute, and the diurnal 

 motions also accord, so that there can be little doubt that 

 the identification of M. Perrotin's object with No. no is 

 correct. With the above correction the mean anomaly, 

 April 28*5 Greenwich mean time, is 262° 8' 27", and thus 

 with the other elements given by Dr. Oppenheim we have | 



the following positions, which will be pretty near the true 

 ones. At i2h. Greenwich mean time : — 



R.A. N.P.D. Log. distance, 



h. m. s. „ , 



May 



LECTURES AT THE ZOOLOGICAL 

 GARDENS* 

 Mr. J. W. Clarke on Sea Lions and Seals 

 II. 

 'X'HE Sea Lion that is best known is the Northern Sea 

 J- Bear {O. nrsina), which is almost entirely confined 

 to the Pribylov Islands. These islands were discovered 

 in 1787 by a Russian sailor of that name. The slaughter 

 of the animals is under the regulations of the United 

 States Government. There are two islands, that of St. 

 Paul and that of St. George, and the number of seals that 

 have been calculated to exist in a given year upon one of 

 them — namely, 1,152,000 — will give a good notion of the 

 multitudes of these animals to be met with at one of their 

 favourite haunts. There is about half that number on 

 St. George, making nearly 2,000,000 on the two islands. 

 Out of this vast number, ico,ooo are annually killed, prin- 

 cipally young males. In South Shetland the " take " of 

 fur seals was 320,000 in 1821 and 1822, and as all that 

 arrived were killed, the speedy extinction of the colony 

 was the result. The same happened in New Zealand. 



A full-grown male Otaria ursina is between seven and 

 eight feet long, the female not being more than four feet. 

 The males reach their maximum size at about the sixth 

 year, the females at the fourth. The hairy coat consists 

 of an outer covering of long, flattened, coarse hair, beneath 

 which is a dense coating of long, fine, silky fur. 



The next species is Steller's Sea Lion {O. stelleri), 

 named in honour of its discoverer. It is much larger than 

 the other species, the males being as much as sixteen feet 

 long. The ears are short and pointed, much broader than 

 those of the Fur Seal. It is found on the island of St. 

 Paul, extending down the coasts of Kamschatka and 

 California. At San Francisco it inhabits an island in the 

 harbour where Mr. Woodford has built a large hotel, to 

 which parties resort to dme and look at the Sea Lions 

 play. The under-fur of this species is so short as to be 

 useless for clothmg purposes. 



There is another Otaria on the Californian coast, found 

 in Japan also. It was first described by Schlegel from 

 specimens collected by Siebold. It has been named 

 O. gilliespii, but it would be far better to adopt the name 

 since suggested by its original describer, and call it 

 O.japonica. It is much smaller than the species named 

 after Steller, and the skull presents an exceptionally large 

 crest. 



The next species to be mentioned is the one which 

 extends round South America, from Peru to the River 

 Plate — Otaria jubata — of which a specimen is living in 

 the Gardens, having been obtained by its keeper, Franqois 

 Lecomte, from the Falkland Islands, when a mere pup. 

 A full-grown male may reach nine feet in length, the 

 females being much smaller. The fur is of no use for 

 sealskin, as the undercoat is very scanty. The male has 

 a mane, and is therefore called " Lion." 



Inhabiting precisely the same localities, round Cape 

 Horn and the Falkland Islands, is the Fur Seal of com- 

 merce — Otaria falklandica. It is much smaller than the 



* Continued from vol. xi. p. 514. 



