192 



Life and Letters of Francis Gallon 



The last section of this chapter is entitled the Relative Influence of the 

 Father and the Mother. The fore, middle, and ring fingers of the right hand 

 of the father and mother of 1 36 sons and 219 daughters were tabled under 

 the 53 standard patterns, and I present Galton and Collins' results in the 

 form of percentages of likenesses found in the case of the three fingers. It 

 will be seen that for the fore and ring fingers there is no difference. 



Percentages of Same Finger-prints in Parents and Offspring on 

 the basis of 136 Sons and 219 Daughters. 



I think it may be safely inferred from these percentages : 



(i) that the Son has no greater degree of resemblance to the Father than 

 the Daughter has ; 



(ii) that the Son has no greater degree of resemblance to the Mother 

 than the Daughter has; 



(iii) that there is no sensible degree of difference between the resem- 

 blances of Father and Mother to their offspring in the fore and ring fingers; 



(iv) that there does appear to be a difference in the middle finger, and 

 this alone causes the Mother's total of resemblances to be greater than the 

 Father's. 



Are we to assert as a result of these conclusions (a) that the heredity 

 factor has greater influence in the case of the middle finger, and (b) that 

 the mother has more influence than the father on the finger-prints of the 

 offspring? 



Galton does not pledge himself to (b), but merely throws it out as a 

 suggestion. We must, however, note that the resemblances here given include 

 not only the hereditary but the organic factor, and the values of the per- 

 centages given if they were corrected for random agreement might show very 

 different results. The middle finger has a far higher percentage of loops (see 

 the table on our p. 184) than the fore or ring fingers, hence there will be a 

 far larger number of random coincidences to be corrected for. Until that is 

 done we cannot accept (a) as true on the basis of the above table. Further, 

 Galton has not given the digital distribution of patterns for the two sexes, 

 and if these be not the same we cannot straightaway assume that (b) holds, 

 or indeed that either parent has the like influence on son and daughter. 



