It is well known that Hubert's function of a homogeneous ideal in the ring of polynomials K[x0, …, xm], where K is a field and x0, …, xm are independent indeterminates over K, is, for large values of r, a polynomial in r of degree equal to the projective dimension of (1). Samuel (4) and Northcott (2) have both shown that if the field K is replaced by an Artin ring A, is still a polynomial in r for large values of r. Applying this generalization Samuel (4) has shown that in a local ring Q the length of an ideal qρ, where q is a primary ideal belonging to the maximal ideal m of Q, is, for sufficiently large values of ρ, a polynomial in ρ whose degree is equal to the dimension of Q.