Behavior and Assimilation

IN a discussion of Liebig's law of the miinillmul (Hooker, '17), proof was given of the existence of an integrating principle which, as AAdams ('18, p. 481) points out, is equivalent to Bancroft's law, so called because Bancroft ('11) was the first to indicate the application of Le Chatelier's theorem to biology. In fact, if it be admitted that organisms are systems in equilibrium, it follows that they obey the theorem of Le Chatelier. Bancroft's formulation of the law is "that a system tends to change so as to minimize an external disturbance." But this statement is so broad that it fails to convey the full significance of the theorem and apparently has led to some confusion. It theref ore seems advisable to give a detailed discussion of the theorem of Le Chatelier in its application to biology iand more particularly to point out its relation to other biological principles. "It will be perceived," says Troland ('17, p. 325), "that the demand . . . is not for new biological facts, but for physico-chemical conceptions in terms of which a chaos of biological facts, already at hand, can be explained or svstematizecl." Findlay ('04, p. 56) defines the theorem of Le Chatelier as follows: