PALM AND SOLE STUDIES. 23! 



hypothenar patterns of the same type and with the details so 

 similar would be at most one in a hundred, and probably much 

 less. Multiplying this rough estimate (i in 100) by the chance of 

 I in 12, the figure already obtained for the occurrence of a com- 

 plete suppression of line C, and we get I in 1,200 for the probable 

 occurrence of these two characters in combination, relying upon 

 chance alone. 



The other hands of this same pair, the lefts, correspond almost 

 as closely, with a like suppression of line C, and with the hypothe- 

 nar in each reduced to a single triradius, and no other trace of a 

 pattern. Here the mother's hands also were both of this latter 

 type with respect to the hypothenar, but the main lines are en- 

 tirely different. 



The results from such isolated instances, however, show merely 

 that in the friction-skin configuration we are dealing with heritable 

 characters, and in themselves show little more. A more detailed 

 line of inquiry is offered by the study of a large family, where the 

 parents belong to distinctly different types, and where the 

 children are numerous. Such a family is that of H - - from my 

 collection, where the material consists of the complete prints 

 (palms and soles) of the father, W, the mother, N; and six chil- 

 dren, G, V, M, C, F, and E, together with the palm prints of the 

 father's three sisters, Fa, Mi, and Lo, which serve as valuable 

 collateral evidence. Of the six children F is a boy, the other 

 five are girls. 



The hands of the two parents, W and N, are of distinctly dif- 

 ferent types, that of W, the father, being very complex, with 

 traces at least of all five palmar patterns, while the palms of the 

 mother, N, are unusually free from such special features, and 

 show only an included loop between lines C and D of the left 

 hand, possibly a fourth interdigital, also a loop acjoss the free 

 end of the rudimentary line C of the right, the condition desig- 

 nated in a formula by the digit 8. 



These two opposite types, mated, have produced six offspring, 

 in which the presence or absence of the five palmar patterns are 

 presented here in tabular form: 



The presence of a pattern is represented by a X, the absence 

 by , and a rudiment by r. The two designations ia each column 



