PREFATORY NOTE 



THIS book of mine has little need of preface, for indeed it is 

 " all preface " from beginning to end. I have written it as 

 an easy introduction to the study of organic Form, by methods 

 which are the common-places of physical science, which are by 

 no means novel in their application to natural history, but which 

 nevertheless naturalists are httle accustomed to employ. 



It is not the biologist with an inkling of mathematics, but 

 the skilled and learned mathematician who must ultimately 

 deal with such problems as are merely sketched and adumbrated 

 here. I pretend to no mathematical skill, but I have made what 

 use I could of what tools I had ; I have dealt with simple cases, 

 and the mathematical methods which I have introduced are of 

 the easiest and simplest kind. Elementary as they are, my book 

 has not been written without the help — the indispensable help — 

 of many friends. Like Mr Pope translating Homer, when I felt 

 myself deficient I sought assistance ! And the experience which 

 Johnson attributed to Pope has been mine also, that men of 

 learning did not refuse to help me. 



My debts are many, and I will not try to proclaim them all : 

 but I beg to record my particular obligations to Professor Claxton 

 Fidler, Sir George Greenhill, Sir Joseph Larmor, and Professor 

 A. McKenzie ; to a much younger but very helpful friend, 

 Mr John Marshall, Scholar of Trinity; lastly, and (if I may say 

 so) most of all, to my colleague Professor William Peddie, whose 

 advice has made many useful additions to my book and whose 

 criticism has spared me many a fault and blunder. 



I am under obligations also to the authors and publishers of 

 many books from which illustrations have been borrowed, and 

 especially to the following: — 



To the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office, for leave to 

 reproduce a number of figures, chiefly of Foraminifera and of 

 Eadiolaria, from the Reports of the Challenger Expedition. 



