204 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



when the whorl has a great core, o, when there is at least one complete and 

 detached ring in the whorl*. 



Eicht Forms of Whorl, (fruo deltas) 



/^M 



Open, on one side 



Closed OfJer? on both sides 



Ojierc on one side Supplied both sides Open on both sides 



Fig. 35. Types of whorls from Galton's Finger Print Directories. 



Galton remarks that it is best to leave a whorl ambiguous rather than 

 attach a v or a q to it which it does not clearly and distinctly demand. "The 

 omission of a suffix is of little harm ; the insertion of a wrong one is. Cases 

 should be dealt with merely as ambiguous, no suffix being attached to them, 

 when the outline followed from the inner delta to a point above the outer delta 

 or below it, as the case may be, does not suggest the same suffix as it does 

 when the outline is followed in the opposite direction. The test in question 

 is rapidly made and effective" (p. 94). It is, however, on the r and s sub- 

 classification that Galton chiefly depends for breaking up the all or many 

 whorl groups. Thus he writes : 



" It is mainly through the help of the r and s suffixes that it is possible to discriminate 

 between the all- whorls which occur 19 times in every 1000 cases [see our p. 200]. The whorls 



* According to Galton's nomenclature, when in tracing any part of a pattern the direction 

 changes so as to have pointed to all parts of the compass, that pattern is to be called a whorl. 



Partial, and ComPL.ETE CrRcurrs 



2^ 



Fig. 36 a. 

 Illustration of complete circuits needed to classify a pattern as a whorl. 



Hence arches with elliptic or circular rings between their arched ridges are classed as whorls. 

 See Plates 7 and 8 of Finger Prints (our Plates XI and XII) and the accompanying cut, 

 Figs. 36 a and 36 b, where, however, a print like Fig. 36 b, for which the compass point 4 

 might easily be non-existent, is still counted a whorl. 



