the way stars form now, in the dense clumps within Galactic giant molecular clouds? Can the study of one of these phenomena possibly shed light on the other? Larson (1988, 1993, 1996), has emphasized the possible parallels between the basic pattern of local star formation and the birth of globular clusters within large protogalactic clouds in a scenario for the collapse of galaxies from clumpy initial conditions (as in, e.g., the classic picture of Searle & Zinn 1978, and current models of hierarchical galaxy formation). A more quantitative discussion along these lines, including an exposition of links to several of the gross characteristics of GCSs, is given by Harris & Pudritz (1994). Most recently, McLaughlin & Pudritz (1996) and Elmegreen & Efremov (1997) have focussed in detail on the globular cluster luminosity function (the number of clusters per unit magnitude, from which may be derived the mass function $d{\cal N}/dm$ for the entire system of globulars in a given galaxy) in attempts to model this property of GCSs using our current understanding of present-day star formation in molecular clouds and their clumps.

The work presented in this paper further explores the connections between the formation of stars, globular clusters, and 