Clustering around Herbig AeBe stars

We show that the observed correlation between the luminosity of young stars and the richness of associated clusters does not necessarily imply that th ere is a physical mechanism that favours the formation of massive stars in clusters. Instead, the data are compatible with a scenario in which stars a re assembled at random into clusters with a spectrum of membership number, N. We also show that the required spectrum is of the form g(N) proportional to N-alpha, where alpha is in the range 1.5 to 2, and note that this is al so the mass spectrum of clumps in molecular gas.