April, 1911. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



137 



c 



D 







during the act of impressing. In the modern 

 ho\\e\'er, the imprints were better impressed 

 and were olniouslx intended for ornament. 

 Had earl\- men some faint knowledge of 

 the ornamental qualities of hnger-patterns ? 

 One fancies one can detect some glimmer- 

 ings of that conception in crude savage 

 designs, but I must not dilate on that 

 tempting theme here. Endow ed. or afflicted, 

 with nnopir e\es I was led very early to 

 notice how . in the modern ware, one peculiar 

 pattern of lineations would reappear with 

 great persistency, as if the same artist had 

 again left her sign-mark on her work. 



I examined directh' many thousands of 

 lixing fingers, then passed on to consider 

 impresses on puttw bees - wax, sealing- 

 wax, clay, and other substances, taken from 

 ni\' own fingers, those of students under 

 m\- can.', and medical 

 men, native and foreign, 

 and out - patients who 

 might \'isit the hospital. 

 These were at first \er\' 

 roughh' classified and 

 anah"sed. I am (]uite 

 sure that at this point 

 the conception of a wide 

 and general method of 

 identification flashed upon 

 me with suddenness. 

 Almost immediateh- fol- 

 lowed a most depressing 

 sense of moral responsi- 

 bilit\' and danger. What 

 if someone were wrongly 

 identified and made even 

 to suffer innocenth' 

 through a defective 

 method ? It seemed to 

 me that a great deal had 

 to be done before publicK- 

 proposing the adoption 

 of such a scheme. Till 

 then we had used wax 

 and other plastic sub- 

 stances (and on the 

 whole paraffin was found 

 to be best), but now I 

 remembered lessons on 

 botany I received in .\nderson's College, 

 Glasgow, as a lad attending business. The 

 course — an evening course — cost two shillings 

 and sixpence for the session. We used to 

 print the leaves got in Saturday afternoon 

 excursions with an oily mixture of burnt cork. 

 Using good printing ink in Japan, then, we 

 got large numbers of clear and excellent finger 

 impressions. Their variet\- was wonderful, 

 and we could study details with much greater 

 ease and delicacy than in relievo impressions. 

 From that stage onward I made stead\' obser- 

 vations, seeking speciallj- to determine whether 



Figure 2. 



Rugae or ridges on 

 the under surface 

 of the prehensile 

 tail of Atclcs atcr 

 (Spider Monkey). 



^ 



(g 



Y ! 



toys, [latterns characteristic of one indi\-idual ever varied 

 from time to time, either in general arrange- 

 ment or in linear detail. At this time I had 

 noticed that the pigment in human freckles 

 and in the skin affection calico. Ic-j.codenna 

 (supposed by some to be the "white leprosy " 

 of the Hebrews) migrated, as mv teacher, 

 Lord Lister, had shown to be the fact with 

 the pigment on a frog's foot. The mode I 

 took to test whether the ridges ever shifted 

 their situation or changed their form was h\ 

 shaving away their elevations or rubbing them 

 down with various powders to smoothness, 

 having first taken careful imprints of the pat- 

 terns. After the skin grew up again fresh im- 

 prints were taken and compared with the old 

 ones. These were scrutinised ver\- carefulh- 

 for changes, but in many hundreds of cases, 

 tested tlius three or four times, not one soli- 

 tary exampleof a variation 

 in pattern was detected. 



The patterns always 

 came up with perfect fidel- 

 it\- to the old standard. 

 .\rrangements were made 

 for a still more extensive 

 test extending also over a 

 greaterperiod. but exhaus- 

 ting illness from climate 

 and o\erwork caused m\- 

 return to England, and 

 broke foratime the thread 

 of m\- inxestigations. I 

 returned to Japan after a 

 rest, but had again to come 

 back to England in 1886. 

 The firm con\iction. how - 

 e\er, was established in 

 my mind, which nothing 

 has occurred to change, 

 that skin furrows for the 

 purposes of identification 

 are invariable throughout 

 adult life. Observations 

 of select cases from that 

 period— thirty-two \ears 

 ago — till now have been 

 made from time to time 

 onl}- to confirm m\- early 

 results. Figure 1 is one 

 of my earliest prints. In fourteen years it had 

 not changed in the living person. From time 

 to time I have watched cases of fever, and ha\e 

 draw n medical attention to the subject, think- 

 ing the great activity of the skin shown b\- 

 peeling ordesquamat ion might be accompanieil 

 w ith some changes of pattern, but no case has 

 yet been observed by m\-self or recorded b\- 

 others so far as known to me. The subject of 

 classification now presented itself. Those w ho 

 talk gliblv about comparing a single "' thumb 

 print " — the favourite digit — with, say. four 

 millions of single finger prints, do not seem, as a rule. 





Figure 3. Skin Lineations (diagrammatic). 



Figure 4, 



Smudge from 

 Finger, 



th 



e 



