equal angles, and in which, in this case, all the cells have an equal number of ãinterfacialã contacts.
We need by no means be surprised to find that, in such arrangements, the commonest and most stable distributions are those in which the cell-contacts are distributed as uniformly as possible between the several cells. We always expect to find some such tendency to equality in cases where we have to do with small oscillations on either side of a symmetrical condition. {385}
The rules and principles which we have arrived at from the point of view of surface tension have a much wider bearing than is at once suggested by the problems to which we have applied them; for in this elementary study of the cell-boundaries in a segmenting egg or tissue we are on the verge of a difficult and important subject in pure mathematics. It is a subject adumbrated by Leibniz, studied somewhat more deeply by Euler, and greatly developed of recent years. It is the Geometria Situs of Gauss, the Analysis Situs of Riemann, the Theory of Partitions of Cayley, and of Spatial Complexes of Listing12. The crucial point for the biologist to comprehend is, that in a closed surface divided into a number of faces, the arrangement of all the faces, lines and points in the system is capable of analysis, and that, when the number of faces or areas is small, the number of possible arrangements is small also. This is the simple reason why we meet in such a case as we have been discussing (viz. the arrangement of a group or system of eight cells) with the same few types recurring again and again in all sorts of organisms, plants as well as animals, and with no relation to the lines of biological clasôÙsiôÙfiôÙcaôÙtion: and why, further, we find similar conôÙfiôÙgurôÙaôÙtions occurring to