218 University of California Publications in Zoology (Vou. 9 
Ill. THE INDISPENSABILITY OF MATHEMATICS FOR THE 
SOLUTION OF SUCH BIOLOGICAL, PROBLEMS AS 
THE STATION IS ENGAGED UPON. 
The question of the place of mathematics in the station’s 
future work, although quite different methodologically from that 
just considered, is administratively much the same. It is obvious 
from a cursory examination of our latest publications that there 
is hardly a phase of the biological research constituting the main 
programme that does not even now demand constant resort to 
quantitative treatment involving considerable proficiency in 
mathematics. If the investigations continue in the course 
marked out, this demand will surely become more insistent. Two 
main and rather widely separated lines of mathematical dealing 
are clearly entered upon. One includes the array of problems 
involving the correlation between the organisms numerically 
treated, and environmental factors mensuratively treated. Sue- 
cess depends and will more and more depend on the resourceful- 
ness and skill with which data can be segregated, coefficients of 
correlation computed, and so on. 
The other demand upon mathematics grows out of the nature 
of the individual organism and depends on the fact of rhythm 
or periodicity, so familiar and so deep-seated in apparently all 
organic beings. Age in almost if not quite all organisms, man 
as well as the rest, with which we are concerned in practical life, 
is of such obviously great importance that its wide neglect by 
biology itself except in the most general way is truly remark- 
able. It would appear that science must before long take due 
heed of the great extent to which a given organism’s morphology 
and physiological capacity at a given time in its life are mathe- 
matical functions of the life-career taken as a whole. Once this 
is duly reeognized, quantitative valuation of a particular strue- 
ture or activity at each particular age, relative to the value of 
the same part or function at various other ages extending over 
as great a part of the whole life as possible, will be seen to be 
imperatively demanded by rigorous biology. This will make the 
measuring rule and the balance as indispensable to the biological 
laboratory as they are to the chemical and physical laboratory 
