Page:Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Vol 60.djvu/27

Rh (15) The prominences must be fed from the outer parts of the solar atmosphere, since their spectra show lines which are absent from the spectrum of the chromosphere.

(16) The absence of the Fraunhofer lines from the integrated spectra of the solar surroundings and uneclipsed photosphere shortly after totality need not necessarily imply the existence of a reversing layer.

(17.) The spectrum of the base of the sun’s atmosphere, as recorded by the prismatic camera, contains only a small number of lines as compared with the Fraunhofer spectrum. Some of the strongest bright lines in the spectrum of the chromosphere are not represented by dark lines in the Fraunhofer spectrum, and some of the most intense Fraunhofer lines were not seen bright in the spectrum of the chromosphere. The so-called “ reversing layer ” is therefore incompetent to produce the Fraunhofer spectrum by its absorption.

(18) Some of the Fraunhofer lines are produced by absorption taking place in the chromosphere, while others are produced by absorption at higher levels.

(19) The eclipse work strengthens the view that chemical substances are dissociated at solar temperatures.

Although some account of his recent discoveries in Somaliland (tropical Africa) has already been given to the Anthropological Institute by Mr. Seton-Karr, and has been published in their Journal, these discoveries seem to me to have so wide an interest, and such an important bearing on the question of the original home of the human race, that I venture to call the attention of this Society to them.

In the course of more than one visit to Somaliland for sporting purposes, Mr. Seton-Karr noticed, and brought home for examination, a number of worked flints, mostly of no great size, which he laid before the Anthropological Section of the British Association, at the meeting last year at Ipswich. Although many of these specimens were broad flat flakes trimmed along the edges so as to be of the “le Moustier type” of M. Gabriel de Mortillet, and although the general facies of the collection was suggestive of the implements being of palaeolithic age, they did not afford sufficient evidence to enable a satisfactory judgment to be formed whether they undoubtedly belonged to the palaeolithic period.