252 



MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



title of " Personal Identification and Description" 

 [106], on which larger subject there was much new 

 to be said. 



When thinking over the matter, the fact occurred 

 to my recollection that thumb-marks had not infre- 

 quently been spoken and written about, so I inquired 

 into their alleged use, especially by the Chinese. I 

 also wrote a letter to Nahire asking for informa- 

 tion, which had the important effect of drawing a 

 response from Sir William Herschel, who, as a Com- 

 missioner in India, had actually used them in his 

 district, for many years, as a means of preventing 

 personation. But the system fell into disuse after 

 his departure. Sir William gave me every assistance, 

 by forwarding to me both old and modern finger- 

 prints of himself and of others of his family, and in 

 showing his way of making the impressions. 



I took up the study very seriously, thinking that 

 finger-prints might prove to be of high anthropo- 

 logical significance, but I may say at once that they 

 are not. I have examined large numbers of persons 

 of different races to our own, as Jews, Basques, Red 

 Indians, East Indians of various origins, Negroes, 

 and a fair number of Chinese. Also persons of very 

 different characters and temperaments, as students 

 of science, students of art, Quakers, notabilities of 

 various kinds, and a considerable number of idiots at 

 Earlswood Asylum, without finding any pattern 

 that was . characteristic of any of them. But as I 

 continued working at finger-prints, their importance 

 as a means of identification became more and more 

 obvious, and since my theoretical work on Heredity, 

 Correlation, etc., of which I shall speak further, had 



