ON PROFESSOE PEAESON'S CONTEIBUTIONS TO 

 OSTEOLOGY. By Egbert Worthington, B.A., Clare 

 College, Cambridge. 



In a series of papers, published by the Eoyal Society, Professor 

 Karl Pearson has lately presented ns with the foundations of a 

 very comprehensive mathematical theory of evolution. The 

 first significant attempts at the application of mathematical 

 analysis to the problems of evolution are those of Mr Galton, 

 and subsequently of Professor Weldon. Professor Pearson has 

 attacked the problems suggested by these and other investigators, 

 armed with all the weapons of precision in his mathematical 

 armoury, and the results are such as our biologists cannot afford 

 to neglect. 



Unfortunately the mathematical knowledge of many biologists 

 is at the best elementary, and to them Professor Pearson's 

 work must necessarily be well-nigh unintelligible. On this 

 account, perhaps, the value of these contributions to the theory 

 of evohition is at present hardly generally appreciated. The 

 very juxtaposition of the words ' mathematics ' and 'evolution' 

 appears incongruous — the dead and the living are to sit together 

 at the feast : what is this complex dish which is to feed them 

 both ? The idea, however, of obtaining numerical expressions 

 for ' heredity,' ' variation,' and the like, can seem no more strange 

 to us than that of the mathematical representation of the distribu- 

 tion of electricity on a lump of amber would have appeared to our 

 forefathers, well acquainted though they were with the phenom- 

 enon itself. Yet, without such means of exact argument, our 

 knowledge of the ' properties of matter ' would probably be 

 much where it was a hundred years ago. The application of 

 the mathematical form of argument to the ' properties of living 

 matter ' appears indeed to be the sign of a true advance. 

 Mathematics is the science of quantity — and if quantity is 

 a property of living phenomena, to their discussion, sooner or 

 later, mathematics will have to be applied. But, as Professor 



