a 
DercEMBER 18, 1913] 
NATURE 
469 
putting the Piltdown remains into a genus separate 
from all the other Hominid. Eoanthropus must 
represent a persistent and very slightly modified 
descendant of the common ancestor of Homo sapiens 
and H. primigenius. There is no positive evidence 
that the genus Homo, or even Eoanthropus, had come 
into existence in Pliocene times. The fact of E. daw- 
soni being found in a deposit that may perhaps be 
as late as the Mid-Pleistocene does not invalidate the 
conclusion that the genus to which it belonged was 
ancestral to the Heidelberg man. When man was 
first evolved the pace of evolution must have 
been remarkably rapid, and it is quite  pos- 
sible that amidst the turmoil incidental to the 
inauguration of the Pleistocene period a new group 
of anthropoids rose superior to the new difficulties, 
and became ““dawn-men."’ It is almost certain that 
man began to speak when his jaw was in the stage 
represented in that of Eoanthropus. The brain 
already shows considerable development of the parts 
associated in modern man with the power of speech. 
New Soutu WaAtzgs. 
Linnean Society, October 29.—Mr. W. S. Dun, presi- 
dent, in the chair.—Dr. J. M. Petrie : Hydrocyanic acid 
in plants. Part ii., Its distribution in the grasses of 
New South Wales. The existence of hydrocyanic acid 
in the Graminez was discovered by Jorissen, in 1884. 
Since then, about thirty species have been recorded 
as containing a cyanogenetic compound. The 
author’s work is a continuation of investigations into 
the cause of sudden fatalities among sheep in this 
State. More than 200 species of grasses were tested 
systematically. Glucosides, capable of yielding hydro- 
cyanic acid, were detected in twenty species, eleven 
of these being native grasses, the others introduced. 
The acid existed free in only two species, Cynodon 
incompletus and Diplachne dubia; in the rest, it is 
mainly combined as glucoside, and, therefore, only 
liberated by contact with the natural ferment of the 
plant under favourable conditions.—Archdeacon F. E. 
Haviland : Notes on the indigenous plants of the Cobar 
district, N.S.W. No. 2. In this second contribution 
the number of natural orders represented in the Cobar 
district is increased from 64 to 71; of genera, from 
197 to 275; and of species, from 337—504.—E. Turner : 
New fossorial Hymenoptera from Australia and Tas- 
mania. 
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