Personal Identification and Description 



193 



I have discussed this chapter at length, primarily because Galton was 

 undoubtedly the first to take up the subject of the inheritance of finger- 

 print patterns, and it is desirable that later workers should see how he 

 approached the problem, and so try to avoid the difficulties be encountered. 

 Our statistical tools are better now than such tools were in 1892, but still the 

 problem remains of transcendent difficulty. Secondly, I have done so because 

 Galton provides as usual many suggestions for further inquiry. Here as else- 

 where we come across the urgent problem of a standard set of patterns, which 

 will subdivide plain loops into small approximately equal subclasses. Galton's 

 set of 53 standard patterns provides at once too many and too few. There 

 is no great advantage gained by dividing whorls into "inner" and "outer," 

 and the division of loops into "inner" and "outer" is not division enough. 



Chapter XII (pp. 192-197) deals with Races and Classes. Galton obtained 

 finger-print series for the English, Pure Welsh, Hebrew, Negro and Basque 

 races. These were dealt with in a variety of ways and he concluded that 

 there was no peculiar pattern which characterises persons of the above 

 races. Many tabulations to discover racial differentiations appear to have 

 been made without any great success. As an illustration Galton gives the 

 following table: 



Percentages of Arches in the Right Forefinger. 



Galton considers that there may be a significant difference between the 

 percentages of arches in the English and Hebrew races. Now the probable 

 error of his percentage value for English is 1*5 with a slightly greater value 

 for the Welsh and Negro. Accordingly we see that the three series of 250 

 are too small to show significant differences if they really exist between these 

 three races. The difference between Hebrew and English is 3 to 4 times its 

 probable error and may be significant. The point needs further inquiry on 

 longer series. Although no statistical differentiation of the Negro was found, 

 Galton remarks: 



"Still, whether it be from pure fancy on my part, or from some real peculiarity, the 

 general aspect of the Negro print strikes me as characteristic. The width of the ridges seems 

 more uniform, their intervals more regular, and their courses more parallel than with us. In 

 short, they give an idea of greater simplicity, due to causes that I have not yet succeeded in 

 submitting to the test of measurement." (p. 196.) 



Galton considers that this matter should be pursued further, especially 

 "among the Hill tribes of India, Australian blacks and other diverse and so- 

 called aboriginal races." I would venture to add the amplest study of the 



PGIII 



25 



