FINGER-PEINT SYSTEM LAUFER. 633 



indebtedness to Sir William J. Herschel/ and from him he appears to 

 have received the first impetus for an investigation of -this subject. 

 Galton's attention was first drawn to it in 1888 when preparmg a 

 lecture on Personal Identification for the Roj^al Institution, which 

 had for its principal object an account of the anthropometric method 

 of Bertillon. ''Wishing to treat the subject generally," he says, 

 "and having a vague knowledge of the value sometimes assigned to 

 finger marks, I made inquiries, and was surprised to find both how 

 much had been done, and how much there remained to do before 

 establishing their theoretical value and practical utility."^ This 

 confession implies that Galton did not discover the idea himself, but 

 derived it from, and relied solely on, his predecessors, chiefly Herschel, 

 who, moreover, can not claim that the idea was whoUy his own. 



This method of identification had been suggested to Sir William 

 Herschel by two contracts in Bengali, dated 1858. "It was so difficult 

 to obtain credence to the signatures of the natives that he thought 

 he woidd use the signatures of the hand itself, chiefly with the inten- 

 tion of frightening the man who made it from afterwards denying his 

 formal act. However, the impression proved so good that Sir Wil- 

 liam Herschel became convinced that the same method might be 

 further utilized. He finally introduced the use of finger prints in 

 several departments at Ilooglily (in Bengal) in 1877, after 17 years' 

 experience of the value of the evidence they afforded. A too brief 

 account of his work was given by him in Nature, volume 23, page 23 

 (Nov. 25, 1880). In 1877 he submitted a report in semiofficial form 

 to the Inspector General of Gaols, asking to be allowed to extend the 

 process; but no result followed." "If the use of finger prints ever 

 becomes of general unportance," remarks Galton, "Sir William Her- 

 schel must be regarded as the first who devised a feasible method 

 for regular use and afterwards officially adopted it."^ 



It is difficult to believe that Herschel, stationed in India, should 

 have conjured up, entirely from his own resources, a system which 

 had been known and applied in the East ages before his time. Had 

 he designed it in his home study in England, the matter might be 

 looked upon in a different light. But lie resided at Calcutta, where 

 a large colony of Clunose liad been settled for a long time, and if a 

 European, living in tlic Orient in close official and private relations 

 with its people, conceives an idea whicli seems to belong to liis very 

 surroundings, it would be proper to credit his environment with its 

 due share in shaping that idea. The man laboring on his "invention " 

 for years may easily forget this first impetus. It matters little 



1 Finger Prints. London, 1892, p. 4. Herschel was born in 18.'5.'i and engaged lu the Civil Service of 

 India Irom 1853 to 1S78. 

 » Ibid., p. 2. 

 * Compare Galton, Finger Prints, p. 2S. 



