CONTENTS Introduction.................................................5 1. Preliminaries...........................................6 1. A. Foliations...........................................7 1. B. Geometry of submanifolds.................9 2. The characteristic form..........................11 3. Stability of minimal foliations..................18 4. A metric on the space of foliations.........24 5. Jacobi fields on leaves..........................27 6. The Gauss mapping of a foliation.........37 References...............................................45