PALM AND SOLE STUDIES. 



HARRIS HAWTHORNE WILDER. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



I. Introduction 



II. A Primitive Palm Print 153 



III. The Border Region of the Plantar Friction-Skin 157 



IV. The Reduction of Line C 171 



V. Friction-Skin Correspondence in Pygopagi 211 



VI. The Heritability of Friction-Skin Characters 227 



VII. Bibliography of Friction-Skin Configuration 245 



I. INTRODUCTION. 



In the study of the details of the configuration of the friction- 

 ridges found covering the surfaces of human palms and soles 

 there opens up a field of the greatest value for the biologist. 

 Varying greatly individually, though constant throughout the 

 life of a given individual; still following the lines laid down for 

 them in more primitive mammals, yet modified and varied as the 

 result of mechanical causes; showing markedly and with certainty 

 a direct inheritance from the immediate parents as well as from 

 generations more remote; they may be used with profit by the 

 morphologist, the ethnologist, or the student of genetics, while, 

 as the surest and most positive characters of an individual, they 

 may serve the authorities in the identification of a human body, 

 living or dead. 



A great advantage in the study of these parts lies in the ease 

 with which a print of the surfaces may be taken, thus furnishing 

 a permanent record, accurate in even the minuter details, and 

 easily filed away. These prints, with the ridges marked in 

 black upon a white background, and reduced to a perfectly 

 plane surface, are much easier to study than are the real objects; 

 laid out upon a large table they may be compared with ease; 

 they are always ready for reproduction where desirable. Un- 

 deniably the patterns are complicated, and many new concep- 

 tions, and the new terminology which expresses them, confront 

 the beginner, as in any new field ; but this much once accomplished 



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