October i, 1896J 



.VA TURE 



52: 



A New Spectroscopic Binary. — Prof. E. C. Pickering, 

 in Circular (No. Il) of the Harvard College Observatory, 

 dated August 31, informs us that Prof. Solon I. Bailey has 

 found fi} Scorpii to be a spectroscopic binary. This star is 

 - 57°'i IC33-S.M.P. 5794; its approximate position for 1900 is 

 K.A. i6h. 45-im. Decl. - 37° 53', its jihotometric magnitude 

 being 3 '26. A neighbouring star ^- Scorpii follows about 28s., 

 is i'7 north, with a photometric magnitude of 374. As these 

 two stars were close alongside on the pholographic plate, a com- 

 parison was easy. The spectrum of the first-named is described 

 as of the first type, with the additional lines characteristic of 

 the Orion stars. In some of the s]iectra they are scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable, while in others the lines of the first are broad and 

 hazy, .some, more faint, being distinctly double. Mrs. Fleming, 

 who examined these plates in 1S94, recorded these lines as being 

 double, but the plates were put away for further examination, 

 and subsequently overlooked. An examination of the three 

 plates sent 10 Cambridge .showed that the lines in the spectrum 

 of /)' were single on October 2, 1S92, wide and hazy on July 

 20, 1S94, and double on July 31, 1894. A more minute 

 examination has shown that the changes are very rapid, a period 

 of 35 hours and a nearly circular orbit having been deduced 

 by I'rof Bailey from a discussion of fifty-two photographs. An 

 independent discussion at Harvard gives the average period of 

 34h. 42 'Sm., with an error of less than 6s. Ten observed 

 times, when the lines were single, are represented with an 

 average deviation of 38 minutes each : the maximum deviation 

 is less than an hour. Other stars of this class, only two of 

 which are already known, are f UrsLt Majoris and /3 Aurigie. 

 The former was discovered by Prof. Pickering in 1S89 ; it has 

 a period of 52 days, and is irregular. The latter we owe to 

 Miss A. C. Maury ; the period of this is regular, and is of 

 nearly four days in length. 



The \'.VRiABi.E Star Z Herculis. — A point of great im- 

 portance, but not sufficiently attended to by those who compute 

 variable star observations, is referred to by Mr. Paul S. Vendell 

 in Aslrmioiitiial Journal, No. 20. It is well known that out- 

 standing observations — that is, those which seem apparently to 

 be incorrect — are generally discarded, as leading to erroneous 

 results in the final reduction. This is often done, for instance, 

 when a curve is drawn through the points, representing the 

 observations, and finally smoothed to include, as near as possible, 

 all the data. This smoothing is carried, in some cases, to a 

 considerable extent ; in fact so far that a slight hump in the 

 curve is looked upon as evidently due to errors of observation, 

 and consequently smoothed over, and therefore lost so far as 

 the results are concerned. Mr. Vendell refers to a similar 

 "smoothing" by the rejection of observations which do not 

 bear out the hypothesis of the calcidated orbit. In the note in 

 (|uestion, he takes the case of the four observations, made by 

 .Sluller and Kempf, of the variable star Z Herculis, for the 

 Potsdam Photometric Durchmusterung. The first and last 

 observations satisfy the elements of Hartwig, but these latter 

 are not in accord with observations made by Vendell in 1895. 

 Doner's elements, on the other hand, are found to satisfy the 

 observations of 1894 and 1895, l^"' ""' those made at an earlier 

 date at Potsdam. Mr. Vendell thus concludes that the star's 

 period must evidently be variable, though, as he says, the 

 character and value of the variation cannot at present be deter- 

 mined. He objects, however, strongly to Prof. Duner's allusion 

 to one of his (Vendell's) observations as " evidently erroneous." 

 This observation, as Vendell remarks, " happens to be one of 

 the best defined and best observed of the entire series, and en- 

 tirely free from any suspicion of prepossession, as is indicated 

 by the weight attached to it." 



The value of an apparently outstanding observation is further 

 instanced by Vendell in the case of the star U Pegasi, observed 

 by him in 1S94, which he had been inclined to pass over lightly 

 as " hopelessly discordant," but which proved in reality to have 

 "contained the key to the whole enigma of the star's period." 

 Other instances might be given of similar cases ; but sufficient 

 has been said to draw attention to the fact that the light of 

 variable stars is of a more variable nature than is at present 

 supposed. Recent observations and reductions have shown 

 that the curves representing variability of some stars is not 

 a simple ri.se to maximum and fall to minimum, but the cur- 

 vature varies both on the upward and downward side of the 

 light curve to no slight extent. Cases of this kind .seem to 

 point to the suggestion that more than two bodies are 

 involved. 



NO. 1405, VOL. 54] 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 SECTION H. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Opening Address by Arthur J. Evans, President of 

 THE Section. 



" The Eastern Question " in Anthropology. 



Travellers have ceased to seek for the "Terrestrial 

 Paradise," but, in a broader sense, the area in which lay the 

 cradle of civilised mankind is becoming generally recognised. 

 The plateaus of Central Asia have receded from our view. 

 Anthropological researches may be said to have established the 

 fact that the white race, in the widest acceptation of the term, 

 including, that is, the darker-comple.xioned section of the South 

 and West, is the true product of the region in which the earliest 

 historic records find it concentrated. Its "Area of Character- 

 isation " is conterminous, in fact, with certain vast physical 

 barriers due to the distribution of sea and land in the latest 

 geological period. The continent in which it rose, shut in 

 between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, between the 

 Libyan Desert, and what is now Sahara, and an icier Baltic 

 stretching its vast arms to the Ponto-Caspian basin, embraced, 

 together with a part of anterior Asia, the greater part of Europe, 

 and the whole of Northern Africa. The Mediterranean itself — 

 divided into smaller .separate ba.sins, with land bridges at the 

 Straits of Gibraltar, and from Sicily and Malta to Tunis — did 

 not seriously break the continuity of the whole. The English 

 Channel, as we know, did not exist, and the old sea-coast of 

 what are now the British Islands, stretching far to the west, is, 

 as Prof Boyd Dawkins has shown, approximately represented 

 by the hundred-fathom line. To this great continent Dr. 

 Brinton, who has so ably illustrated the predominant part played 

 by it in isolating the white from the African black and the 

 yellow races of mankind, has proposed to give the useful and 

 appropriate name of " Eurafrica." In " Eurafrica," in its 

 widest sense, we find the birthplace of the highest civilisations 

 that the world has yet produced, and the mother country of its 

 dominant peoples. 



It is true that later geological changes have made this 

 continental division no longer applicable. The vast land area has 

 been opened to the east, as if to invite the Mongolian nomads of 

 the Steppes and Tundras to mingle with the European popula- 

 tion ; the Mediterranean bridges, on the other hand, have been 

 swept away. Asia has advanced, Africa has receded. Vet the 

 old underlying connection of the peoples to the north and south 

 of the Mediterranean basin seems never to have been entirely 

 broken. Their inter-relations affect many of the most interest- 

 ing phenomena of archaeology and ancient history, and the old 

 geographical unity of "Eurafrica" was throughout a great 

 extent of its area revived in the great political system which still 

 forms the basis of civilised society, the Roman Empire. The 

 Mediterranean was a Roman lake. A single fact brings home to 

 us the extent to which the earlier continuity of Europe and 

 North Africa asserted itself in the imperial economy. At one 

 time, what is now Morocco and what is now Northumberland, 

 with all that lay between them on both sides of the Pyrenees, 

 found their administrative centre on the Mosel. 



It is not for me to dwell on the many important questions 

 affecting the physiological sides of ethnography that are bound up 

 with these old geographical relations. I will, however, at least 

 call attention to the interesting, and in many ways original, 

 theory put forward by Prof. Sergi in his recent work on the 

 " Mediterranean Race." 



Prof. Sergi is not content with the ordinary use of the term 

 "White Race." He distinguishes a distinct "brown" or 

 " brunette" branch, whose swarthier complexion, however, and 

 dark hair bear no negroid affinities, and are not due to any 

 intermixture on that side. This race, with dolichocephalic 

 skulls, amongst which certain defined types constantly repeat 

 themselves, he traces throughout the Mediterranean basin, from 

 Egypt, Syria, and .Asia Minor, through a large part of Southern 

 Europe, including Greece, Italy, and the Iberic peninsuKi, to. 

 the British islands. It is distributed along the whole of North 

 Africa, and, according to the theory propounded, finds its 

 original centre of diffusion somewhere in the parts of Somali- 

 land. 



It may be said at once that this grouping together into a 

 consistent system of ethnic factors spread over this vast yet 

 inter-related area — the heart of "Eurafrica" — presents many 



