A Note on the Preceding Paper

Walsh's Theorem II states that if the roots of f (z) are in the circular region C, and if z is exterior to C, then ai lies in C. This is precisely the result obtained by Laguerre as given on page 59 of volume I of his collected works, if expressed in non-homogeneous coordinates as on page 57. We shall use another form of Laguerre's Theorem (loc. cit., p. 57) to prove the underlying proposition on which Walsh bases his proof of his Theorem I, as follows: Every circle through any point z and its "derived point" a as defined by (1) either passes through all the roots off ( z ), or else has at least one root in the region interior to it, and at least one root in the exterior region. I have recently called attentiont to the fact that this is a corollary of a theorem of Bocher's on jacobians which has served as a starting point in Walsh's earlier papers. With a slight change in Walsh's notation, whereby we substitute z's for a's, the proposition from which Theorem I is deduced may be stated thus