ON THE EVOLUTIONARY STATUS OF 2 VERY ACTIVE VISUAL BINARIES

HD 36705 (AB Doradus) and HD 155555 (V824 Ara) are two nearby very act ive cool stars. Both have strong LiI lambda6708 resonance lines, imply ing high surface Li abundances, comparable to those of very young T Ta uri stars. They also have late M-type visual companions which share th eir proper motion, as confirmed by new astrometric measurements presen ted in this paper. We have carried out intermediate resolution optical spectroscopic observations of the faint companions to HD 36705 and HD 155555. Our main result is that these M-type companions show large Li depletions, and we argue that the dramatic difference in Li abundance between the components of these visual binaries can be understood if they are in an evolutionary stage intermediate between T Tauri stars a nd Pleiades low mass stars.