MANCHESTER. Literary and Philosophical Society, May 30.-Prof. W. W. Haldane Gee, vice-president, in the chair.- Dr. W. H. R. Rivers: Irrigation and the cultivation of taro. In the New Hebrides and New Caledonia irrigation is only used for the cultivation of Colocasia antiquorum, the taro of the Polynesians. This intimate connection between irrigation and taro, which is found in other parts of Oceania, suggests that if irrigation belongs to the megalithic culture (W. J. Perry, Manchester Memoirs, vol. lx., part i.), taro must have had a similar history. The distribution of the plant supports this suggestion, showing a close correspondence with that of the megalithic culture when its tropical and semi-tropical habits are taken into account. It occurs in Oceania, the Malay Archipelago, India and eastern Asia, Arabia, Egypt, East and West Africa, the Canary Islands, Algeria, southern Italy, Spain and Portugal, as well as tropical America. Since the original habitat of the plant is southern Asia, its use as a food was probably acquired by the megalithic people in India and taken by them both to the east and west. Although the general distribution of taro in southern Melanesia corresponds with that of the megalithic influence, a difficulty is raised by the island of Malekula, in the New Hebrides. So far as we know, irrigation does not occur in this island, although megalithie influence is present in a very definite form. To account for the absence of irrigation in this island it is shown that modes of disposal of the dead point to two megalithic intrusions into Oceania, and the high degree of development of irrigation in such outlying islands and districts as New Caledonia, Anaiteum, and north-western Santo in Melanesia, and the Marquesa and Paumotu Islands in Polynesia, suggests that this practice belonged to the earlier of the two movements. There is reason to believe that this movement had relatively little influence in Malekula.-Prof. G. Elliot Smith: The arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. At a time when little was known of early man and his works beyond the stone implements which he fashioned. Sir John Lub-bock (afterwards Lord Avebury) suggested the use of the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic to distinguish respectively between the earlier part of the Stone age, when crudely worked implements were made, and the later period, when more carefully finished workmanship was shown. In spite of the fact that subsequent investigation revealed a high degree of skill in the craftsmanship of the Upper Palaeolithic period, which in many respects shows a very much closer affinity to the Neolithic than to the Lower Palaeolithic period, Lubbock's terminology has become, so firmly established that it has continued to determine the primary subdivision into epochs of the early history of man. Recent research has brought to light a vast amount of new information relating to the achievements of Upper Palaeolithic man, and has conclusively shown that human culture and artistic expression had already attained the distinctive characters which mark them as the efforts of men like ourselves. This view has been amply confirmed by the general recognition of the fact that, after the disappearance of Neanderthal man at the end of the Mousterian period, the new race of men that supplanted them in Europe and introduced the Aurignacian culture conform in all essential respects to our own specific type, Homo sapiens. Thus the facts of physical structure, no less than the artistic abilities and the craftsmanship, of the men of the Upper Palaeolithic proclaim their affinity with ourselves. The earlier types of mankind which invaded Europe and left their remains near Piltdown, Heidelberg, and in the various Mousterian stations belong to divergent species, and perhaps genera, which can be grouped together as belonging to a Palaeahthropic age, which gave place (at the end of the Mousterian epoch in Europe) to a Neoanthropic age, when men of the modern type, with' higher skill and definite powers of artistic expression, made their appearance and supplanted their predecessors. So long as primary importance continues to be assigned to the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic, the perspective of anthropology will be distorted. Though the facts enumerated in this communication are widely recognised, it is found that the writers who frankly admit them lapse from time to time into the mode of thought necessarily involved in the use of the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic. If modern ideas are to find their just and unbiassed expression some such new terminology as is suggested here becomes necessary.