46 IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



loops. A daughter, M, has six children with 2, 11 and 47 

 arches, whorls and loops respectively; or 78.3 per cent of 

 loops. The father of these children has 1 arch, 3 whorls 

 and 6 loops. He is the brother of^N's wife; and I have the 

 prints of the fingers of two of their sisters. These four 

 members of that family have 62.5 per cent of loops, which 

 is slightly less than the average number of loops among all 

 prints. These four have 2 arches, 13 whorls and 25 loops. 

 They do not show any decided family tendency to depart 

 from the normal distribution of prints. 



Another daughter, B, of Mr. and Mrs. A, has eight 

 children who have 11 arches, 2 whorls and 67 loops. 83.75 

 percent of their patterns are loops. B's husband also has 10 

 loops. H, the fourth daughter of the A's has three children, 

 two of whom have 2 whorls and 8 loops each; but the third 

 has 9 whorls and only 1 loop. The percentage of loops 

 among these children is therefore only 57 which is lower 

 than that of any of the other groups of grandchildren. 

 The father of these three children has 2 whorls and 8 loops. 



The thirty grandchildren have 16 arches, 54 w^horls and 

 230 loops; 76.7 per cent of their prints are loops; which is 

 an excess of 9.2 per cent over the normal. They are quite 

 deficient in arches, except in the cases of two individuals, 

 and they are somewhat deficient in whorls. Arches occur 

 but rarely in most of the families into which the children 

 of the A's have married. 



Mr. A has a brother who has 9 loops and 1 pattern wdiich 

 may be called a loop with a very small whorl within it. 



A half brother of Mrs. A had 10 loops. He was married 

 to a sister of the wife of N and of the husband of M, she 

 having 1 arch, 1 whorl and 8 loops. Prints from five of 

 their children reveal 1 arch, 1 whorl and 48 loops, or 96 

 per cent of loops. 



The number of radial loops is noticeably small in the 

 children and grandchildren of the A's; except the children 

 of B, whose husband has radial loops on his index fingers. 

 Among their eight children are 4 radial loops on index 

 fingers. 



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