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SIXTY-FIVE POINTS OF IDENTIFICATION 
Print of a finger-tip showing a loop-pattern, enlarged about eight times. This is 
a common type of pattern, and at first glance the reader may think it could 
be mistaken for one of his own. ‘There are, however, at least sixty-five 
‘‘ridge characteristics’’ on the above print, which an expert would recognize 
and would use for the purpose of identification. If it were found that the 
first two or three of them noted corresponded to similar characteristics on 
another print, the expert would have no doubt that the two prints were made 
by the same finger. In police bureaus, finger-prints are filed for reference 
with a classification based on the type of pattern, number of ridges between 
two given points, etc; and a simple formula results which makes it easy to 
find all prints which bear a general resemblance to each other. The exact 
identity or lack of it is then determined by a comparison of such minutiae as 
the sixty-five above enumerated. 
While the general outline of a pattern is 
inherited, these small characters do not seem to be, but are apparently rather 
due to the stretching of the skin as it grows. 
(Fig. 13.) 
and Miss Whipple named it, really a 
friction-skin is much more plausible. 
Says Lydekker:* 
“The best clue to the problem seems 
to be afforded, somewhat strangely, by 
the tails of such South American 
monkeys as are endowed with prehensile 
power in those appendages; confirma- 
tory evidence being afforded by the 
4 Mostly Mammals, by R. Lydekker. 
Illustration from J. H. Taylor. 
prehensile tails of the American opos- 
sums and tree-poreupines, as well as 
by those of the Australian phalangers. 
In all these animals the naked, grasping 
portion of the tail, which is situated 
at the extremity, is covered with 
papillary ridges and grooves precisely 
similar to those on the hands and feet 
of monkeys, but invariably arranged in 
London, 1903, pp. 145-155. 
513 
