440 Palms and Soles 



area of the palm. Such a record is far more tangible and convinciDg 

 than a correspondence in shape of nose or length of arm. 



6. The rapidity with M^hich a new set of impressions may be taken 

 and compared with an old record, a single glance generally sufficing 

 if in both cases compared the prints have first been interpreted and 

 the lines marked with a colored pencil. 



7. The ease with which a palmar or plantar condition may be ex- 

 pressed in words, enabling one to write or telegraph a formulated 

 description, preparatory to the sending of the actual prints in case 

 the correspondence is sufficient to warrant it. (As examples of such 

 formulas, see the captions given, under some of the figures, quite incom- 

 plete but expressing the most prominent features.) 



(c) Possible Applications of th& System. — In the above paragraph 

 the main attention was directed to the use of the system advocated 

 for the identification of criminals, since the systems now in use deal 

 mainly with that phase of the subject, but it plainly admits of a much 

 wider application and might easily become inaugurated as a system 

 of establishing identity in all cases, including cases of accident, of 

 claimants for inheritances, of deserters from the army, and wherever 

 such identification is necessary. Since the impressions in question 

 are unchanged during life, a general law might require a set of impres- 

 sions of all children born in a town or city to be filed away among 

 the usual records to be accessible at all times whenever necessary 

 for any adequate cause. Such records would best not be taken at 

 birth, but at an age from perhaps five to ten years, at which time 

 the impressions would be larger and more pronounced and the work 

 of taking them would be much simpler. In the absence of a general 

 law, it would be well for individual families to keep such records of 

 their members, so that, in case of accident, identification would not 

 have to depend upon the usual and often fallacious appearance fur- 

 nished by the face. 



Another line in which this system would be of great service would 

 be in the official identification of Chinese, negroes, and other races, 

 the features of which, at least to the Caucasian eye, oifer hardly suffi- 

 cient individuality to be at all times trustworthy. Should the govern- 

 ment collect and catalog all the Chinese of the country, there would 

 be no possibility of evasions of the Geary law, and the most of the. 

 expense assumed in establishing identity would be saved. 



In closing, it would be well to recall to mind the celebrated case 

 of the Tichborne claimant, which dragged through years of litiga- 

 tion involving an enormous expenditure, all of which would have 



