xvn IDENTIFICATION OF INDIVIDUALS 263 



apparent to all who have had anything to do with the adminis- 

 tration of the criminal law, and rough and ready methods of 

 recognition, depending mainly upon the more or less acute 

 faculty of perception and recollection of differences and re- 

 semblances, possessed by the persons upon whom the duty of 

 identification has devolved, have long been in operation. The 

 general conformation, height, form of features, and colour of 

 'complexion, hair, and eyes, have also been noted. Much 

 additional assistance has been obtained by the registration of 

 definite physical characteristics, the results either of natural 

 conformation, or of injury, such as mutilations, tattoo-marks, 

 and scars, inflicted by accident or design. The application of 

 one of the most important scientific discoveries of the age, 

 photography, was eagerly seized upon as a remedy for the 

 difficulties hitherto met with in tracing personal identity, and 

 enormous numbers of photographs were taken of persons the 

 peculiarities of whose career led them to fall into the hands of 

 the police, and who were likely to be wanted again on some 

 future occasion. No doubt much help has been derived from 

 this source, but also much embarrassment. Even among 

 photographic portraits of one's own personal friends, taken 

 under most favourable circumstances, and with no intention of 

 deception, we cannot often help exclaiming how unlike they 

 are to the person represented. With portraits of criminals, 

 the varying expression of the face, changes in the mode of 

 wearing the hair and beard, differences of costume, the effects 

 of a long lapse of time, years perhaps passed in degradation 

 and misery, may make such alterations that recognition 

 becomes a matter at least of uncertainty. That photographs 

 are extremely valuable as aids to identification, when their 

 true position in the process is recognised, cannot be doubted, 

 but as a primary method they have been found to be quite 

 inapplicable, owing partly to the causes just indicated, but 

 mainly to the difficulty, if not impossibility, of classifying 

 them. The enormous expenditure of time and trouble that 

 must be consumed in making the comparison between any 

 suspected person and the various portraits of the stock which 

 accumulates in prison bureaus may be judged of from the fact 

 that, in Paris alone, upwards of 100,000 such portraits of 



