674 CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY. 



uesses, that the individual criminal will be identified in future, if he 

 should be again arrested. It goes without saying that these methods 

 are extremely unreliable — unreliable at best, but in Paris impracticable 

 and valueless, for there they have no less than 100,000 photographs of 

 criminals who have passed through the police headquarters within the 

 past 10 years. It will be recognized as practically impossible to search 

 through a pile of 100,000 photographs to find one which shall bear a 

 likeness to the individual under investigation. It would be impracti- 

 cable, if the photograph, when found, should prove to be the picture of 

 the identical criminal whose case was being investigated, but when we 

 consider the differences of appearance of the same individual, and the 

 similarity of different individuals, as shown by the photograph, the im- 

 possibility of successful identification becomes indisputable. To be of 

 any value as means of identification, there should be two photographs 

 taken of each person, one full face, the other a profile. If this 

 be done with the small size, 2^ by 3^ inches, it would require 10,000 

 square feefe surface measure for 100,000 photographs. These dis- 

 played on a wall in a strip 5 feet in height would require a space 

 2,120 feet in length. A search through such a dreary extent of pho- 

 tographs in order to find the particular one to compare with the crim- 

 inal, whom the ofiicer leads around, and thus be able to identify him, 

 would be like a search among the sands upon the seashore, or the leaves 

 in the forest, and its impossibility, or, at least, impracticability is dem- 

 onstrated. 



M. Bertillon has so arranged his system of anthropometry, and classi- 

 fied it — together with the photographs — as that his usual search does 

 uoi exlend beyond twenty, and rarely above ten, and can easily be re- 

 duced as occasion demands, and be accomplished in a few minutes. 

 Upon the occasion of my visit he gave to Professor Mason and myself 

 a descriptive card of a given criminal, who was brought and measured 

 in our presence — upon the visit of the congress M. Moleschott, senateur 

 from Italy, was given a like chart ; and we were instructed to make the 

 search for ourselves and so understand the classification and find and 

 identify the criminal. The system proved so perfect that we three, 

 strangers, making our first visit to the establishment, hearing the de- 

 scription for the first time, were enabled to understand the classifica- 

 tion and find the box in which his description belonged, with no more 

 than ten cards in it, and so identify the man in question, and this we 

 did within two minutes time. I will describe the method of procedure 

 and the system of classification : 



The instruments. — These are few and simple. Their cost is about $25. 

 A series of them were displayed by their maker, M. Colas, at the Expo- 

 sition in the department of anthropology, and I have described them 

 in the chapter on Anthropology at the Exposition. 



A wooden right-angle for taking the measure of the height. Calipers 

 for measuring length and breadth of head ; two sliding measures of 



