FRANCIS GALTON 531 



applicable to the individual or to the mass, and demonstrated 

 by the fact that only in rare, probably accidental, cases does 

 it apply to masses and that in no case does it apply to in- 

 dividuals. Galton's work on Basset-hounds will always be 

 remembered for the same reason as will De Vries's work on 

 The Evening Primrose^ estimating both of these at their lowest 

 possible valuation. Both were the first attempts to break the 

 ground in a new field of evolutionary inquiry. The pioneer 

 nature of Galton's work in heredity is gracefully and fittingly 

 acknowledged by Johannsen, whose Erblichkeit in Populationen 

 tmd in reinen Linien, which represents the most recent and 

 ingenious attempt to interpret a certain class of hereditary 

 phenomena, is dedicated to him. 



No account of Galton would be complete without reference 

 to his work on Finger Prints. The source of his interest in this 

 subject was delight in the observation and systematisation of 

 the phenomena themselves ; their application was a subsequent 

 matter. His interest in them arose through a request to deliver 

 a Friday evening lecture on the system *' devised by M. Alphonse 

 Bertillon for identifying persons by the measurements of their 

 bodily dimensions." Galton tried to persuade M Bertillon to 

 incorporate finger prints into his system of identification, but 

 without success. He found however that they had already been 

 employed by Sir William Herschel in his district in India, who 

 succeeded in introducing them into Bengal and subsequently 

 throughout the whole of India. At the present day there are 

 few civilised countries in which they are not employed for the 

 purposes of the identification of criminals. Galton's hopes that 

 finger prints would prove to be of high anthropological signifi- 

 cance were not fulfilled. He was unable to find that any particular 

 type is characteristic of members of widely divergent human races; 

 or of such widely different types within a single race as " students 

 of science, students of art, Quakers, notabilities of various kinds 

 and a considerable number of idiots at Earlswood Asylum." 

 Only one result of positive theoretical significance emerged from 

 this study : this was the demonstration that the variation of 

 the pattern was of the discontinuous kind, and the conclusion 

 that the various types had been evolved without the aid of 

 natural selection. 



It is a curious coincidence, if indeed it be a coincidence, 

 that the respective founders of two great schools of heredity, 



