210 Life and Letters of Francis Galton 



distinguish starting from the pole between clockwise and counter-clockwise, 

 or right handed and left-handed screw motion. We have thus twelve primary- 

 classes : 



A = simple radial right-handed screw whorl ; 



B= „ ulnar 



C= ,, fed from both sides right-handed screw whorl; 



Z> = compound radial right-handed screw whorl; 



E= ,, ulnar „ „ 



F= „ fed from both sides right-handed screw whorl; 



G = simple radial left-handed screw whorl ; 



H= „ ulnar 



/= ,, fed from both sides left-handed screw whorl; 



J= compound radial left-handed screw whorl; 



K= „ ulnar 



L = ,, fed from both sides left-handed screw whorl. 



For the resembling and the ambiguous cases we have: 



P = radial whorl approaching arch ; 

 R = ulnar whorl approaching arch ; 



S= radial whorl which might equally well be classed as arch; 

 T= ulnar whorl which might equally well be classed as arch; 

 U= radial whorl approaching loop; 

 V= ulnar whorl approaching loop; 



X = radial whorl which might equally well be classed as loop; 

 Y= ulnar whorl which might equally well be classed as loop. 



Clearly X, Y are interchangeable with x and y, and if the index shows 

 no U or V, then u or v should be sought for. 



Unfortunately Galton's index does not record directly whether his whorls 

 were simple or compound, or whether they were right or left-handed screws. 

 Accordingly, in writing down his symbolism and that above for a few cases, 

 we shall assume, where there is nothing to guide us, that his whorls were 

 simple spirals and right-handed screws. I have chosen ten cases nearly 

 at random from Galton's index of 300 sets of prints, only taking care that 

 the selected individuals had very ample secondary classifications. 



The table below gives the two notations. 



In the condensed system, the indexing should be by order of letters, but 

 for the same letter the Greek should stand before the small italic letter and 

 the small italic before the capital, e.g. /8 before b and b before B. 



It will be seen that it is possible to put an even finer classification based 

 on Galton's into a very concentrated form. Therein alphabets indicate the 

 genera, or primary classification, letters the species or subclasses, and powers 

 the individual peculiarities. In this way many thousand finger-print sets may 

 be indexed without reference to anthropometric characters. But we have 

 always to remember that to avoid multiple entries more and more symbols 

 must inevitably be used. A very little practice, however, teaches anyone 

 the meaning of the symbols employed. It does not seem possible to adopt 



