94 BITTER. 



and given further the requisite factual knowledge of the temperature, 

 salinity, light, etc., of the waters inhabited by the animals, how do 

 the observed changes of the several environmental elements operate 

 as casual factors in the distribution of the animals, this operation 

 being inferred from such correlations as may be discovered in the two 

 series of quantities, biologic and oceanographic? 



Obviously, the immediate problem is one of applied statistics ; that 

 is, of dealing with long numerical series of natural phenomena, which 

 phenomena have been measured. 



Obviously, too, the method is one of dealing with phenomena as 

 they occur in nature, as contrasted with the treatment of phenomena 

 which may occur in a laboratory, or under conditions of manual experi- 

 mentation. Particular attention is called to the fact that this last 

 statement is equivalent to saying that the method is primarily induc- 

 tive rather than deductive. And attention is called to the further 

 facts that the case is illustrative of the very wide truth that so far 

 as concerns the interpretation of actual nature, both animate and 

 inanimate, laboratory and expermiental methods are necessarily 

 deductive for the most part; and that such interpretation can be 

 made inductively only by carrying research into the "field" and put- 

 ting quantitative determinations on a statistical basis. 



Incidentally it may be pointed out that should the method prove 

 practicable and trustworthy, it would be highly useful since there 

 is a wide range of similar problems, many of them exceedingly impor- 

 tant. So far as the principle is concerned, its applicability would be 

 to the entire expanse of living nature, because all organisms, man 

 with the rest, are subject to natural environments of some sort, and 

 the very essence of the method is its effort to bring together data 

 pertaining to organisms and their environments thus taken. 



Indeed, the method is applicable to very many phenomena of nature 

 outside the organic realm, as to those of the atmosphere, of the land 

 masses, and of the waters of the earth. 



