Personal Identification and Description 161 



§ III. Scientific Papers and Boohs. 



A. The Royal Society Papers. 



Gal ton's first important scientific paper on Finger-prints was published in 

 1891 in the Philosophical Transactions*. It is entitled: "The Patterns in 

 Thumb and Finger Marks ; on their arrangement into naturally distinct 

 classes, the permanence of the papillary ridges that make them, and the 

 resemblance of their classes to ordinary genera." It was actually received by 

 the Royal Society on November 3 and read November 27, 1890. It may 

 be described as the fourth scientific contribution to the subject, the first 

 being that of Purkenje in his Comment atio of 1823, the second that of 

 Alix in his memoir of 1868, and the third the work of Kollmann in 1883 

 (see our pp. 141-143, and 174). While these authors endeavoured to give 

 names to various types of finger-prints, none of them had formed a con- 

 siderable collection of human prints, by aid of which it would be possible to 

 describe anything like the variety of types and subtypes which occur, or give 

 even the roughest measure of their relative frequencies. Galton, with his 

 usual insight, grasped the essential point that not only a classification of 

 types was needful, but a study of their relative frequency. He also recog- 

 nised that mere assertion of their permanence must be replaced by a definite 

 demonstration thereof!. In the present case Galton's main data consist of 

 both thumb-prints of 2500 persons taken at his second Anthropometric 

 Laboratory. I do not think Galton had fully realised at that time the amount 

 of correlation that exists between the type of pattern and the individual 

 finger, and that accordingly the frequencies of the thumb-prints cannot 

 without further consideration be applied to those of finger-prints in general. 

 Very soon after the publication of this paper Galton started to take the 

 prints of all ten digits, and formed the large and representative collection 

 now in the Galton Laboratory J. 



The paper first refers to Kollmann's paper (see our p. 141) for the origin 

 of the ridges, but states that no reason has yet been given why the promi- 

 nences tend to arrange themselves in continuous ridges and not to form 

 isolated craters. Galton next describes how he takes impressions, and how it 

 is advantageous to take duplicate impressions on tracing cloth, so that the 

 pattern can be reversed by viewing it face downward§. (I may note that 

 it is always an advantage to take finger-prints in duplicate, for one set can 

 then be used for pencilling in ridges and defining the core.) If the hands be 

 placed palms downward on the knees, so that the thumbs correspond to 



* Vol. 182 B (1891), pp. 1-23. 



t In the Royal Institution lecture of May 25, 1888, Galton had given, owing to the kind- 

 ness of Sir W. J. Herschel, two illustrations of permanence, but even these had not been fully 

 and adequately investigated (see our p. 142). 



J He was taking prints of the fingers as well as the thumbs among his circle of friends in 

 December 1890 and he began early in 1891 a more systematic collection. 



§ It must be remembered that the finger-print is always a reversed impression of what one 

 sees directly. 



pgiii 21 



