202 DR DAVID HEPBURN ON 
FINGER-PRINTS—THEIR EVOLUTION AND 
SIGNIFICANCE. 
By Davin Heppurn, M.D., F.RS.E., V.-P.R.P.S., Lecturer 
on Regional Anatomy in the University of Edinburgh. 
(Read 18th January 1900.) 
Introduction.—The expression “ finger-print ” has become one 
of the every-day phrases of the anthropologist, and also of 
those who are concerned in establishing the identity of people 
suspected of, or convicted of, crime. In such associations 
the phrase means, an impression obtained from the palmar 
surface of the last phalanx of any one of the five digits. 
The term, however, may be made to bear a much more 
extensive significance, for it may apply to similar impres- 
sions derived from the entire palmar surface of the hand, as 
well as to impressions from the sole of the foot and plantar 
surfaces of the toes. The recognition of the fact that such 
impressions are specially characteristic of the individual is 
no new or recent discovery, for, in Western mining com- 
munities, it is recorded that the imprint of the thumb of 
an illiterate man has been accepted as the satisfactory 
equivalent of his signature in connection with pecuniary 
transactions. Again, certain ancient Chinese coins bear an 
incised depression, which is interpreted as typifying the 
mark of a finger-nail, thereby embodying the idea of a 
finger-print, and showing that the Chinese have for long 
appreciated the personal value of a finger-print. Further, 
among the modern methods adopted for the identification of 
the habitual criminal, or for the certain recognition of the 
person who has once passed through the hands of the prison 
authorities, scarcely any method provides safer or more 
easily acquired and applied facts than the examination of 
“ finger-prints.” 
Methods,—Finger-prints are so easily obtained that it is 
scarcely possible to avoid leaving some traces of them upon 
such a surface as glass, but, for purposes of their systematic 
