268 
ing’ to hydraulic flow in actual practice are such 
as to render unavoidable a dependence to a greater 
or less extent on data derived from observation 
rather than on the predictions which might be 
based on the behaviour of a perfect liquid. 
The book deals with hydrostatics and hydro- 
dynamics as well as with the field of phenomena 
more strictly known as hydraulics. Wave theory 
and tidal action are also touched upon. It will 
thus be seen that the purview of the volume is 
fairly extensive, with the consequence that the 
treatment, in parts, is unavoidably sketchy, but, 
as a whole, it gives a fair presentment of a sub- 
ject which is beset by many complexities. 
One cannot help wondering why such important 
scientific works in France are published in paper 
covers, and why it is left to the reader laboriously 
to cut the pages. B.C. 
The Origin of Finger-Printing. By Sir William J. 
Herschel, Bart. Pp. 41. (London: Oxford 
University Press, 1916.) Price -with © paper 
covers, Is. net. i : 
When Sir Francis Galton issued “ Finger-Print 
Directories” in 1895 he inscribed the volume to 
Sir William J. Herschel, Bart., in the following 
words :—“I do myself the pleasure of dedicating 
this book to you, in recognition of your initiative 
in employing finger-prints as official signatures, 
nearly forty years ago, and in grateful remem- 
brance of the invaluable help you freely gave me 
when I began to study them.’’ And now, in the 
year 1916, fifty-eight years after he lighted 
“upon a discovery which promised escape from 
one great difficulty of administration in India,” 
Sir William Herschel tells the story of how our 
modern system of identification by means of 
finger-prints was born in the magistrates’ court 
at Jungipoor, on the upper reaches of the 
Hooghly. In his’ dedication to Sir Edward 
Henry, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, 
Sir William writes as follows :—‘I am offering 
you this old story of the beginnings of finger- 
printing, by way of expressing my warm and 
continuous admiration of those masterly develop- 
ments of its original applications, whereby, first 
in Bengal and the Transvaal, and then in 
England, you have fashioned a weapon of pene- 
trating certainty for the sterner needs of justice.’’ 
There can be no doubt that England has given 
the world the most perfect system: of identifica- 
tion—identification of an individual by means of 
his or her finger-prints.. The .method was 
initiated by Herschel; it was developed and 
created into a system by Galton; it has been per- 
fected and applied by Henry. Nor ‘should it be 
forgotten that it was on the initiative of Mr. 
Asquith, when Home Secretary in the Liberal 
Administration of 1892~95, that the method found 
an early recognition at Scotland Yard. All who 
are interested in the use and significance of finger- 
prints will feel grateful to Sir William Herschel 
for placing on record the first steps of an im- 
portant development. 
NO. 2458, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
[DrcEMBER 7, 1916 
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. 
[The Editor does not hold ‘himself responsible for 
opinions expressed by his correspondents. Neither 
can he undertake to return, or to correspond with ~ 
_ the writers of, rejected manuscripts intended for 
this or any other part of Nature, No notice is 
taken of anonymous communications.] 
Robert Recorde. 
Tue reference to the (probably) unique record of a 
great Welsh man of science in the Notes columns 
of Nature (November 2) well illustrates the uncer- 
tainty of the data of (even scientific) fame, and the 
subtle comparison of the latter to the river which sub- 
merges merit and floats mediocrity to its destination. 
It may now be well affirmed that the writer of the 
Notes paragraph, or the correspondent of the Western 
Mail, or Mr. Arthur Mee in his luminous apprecia- 
tion in the Nationalist of May, 1909, or even the 
myriad-minded Mr. Lloyd George himself, has 
done far less than full justice to the achieve- 
ments of Robert Recorde. Nor has .any of 
them duly underscored the fact that he was a mem- 
ber of our medical profession (M.D.Cantab.), in 
an age, too, in which the pioneers of the “‘advance- 
ment of science’? were mostly disciples of AZsculapius. 
Accordingly, inquiring readers may well be reminded 
that Robert Recorde scored a unique series of “ firsts 
in the very generation in which England tore off the 
swaddling-clothes of ‘‘authority’’ and stepped boldly 
forward to grasp the banner of intellectual empire 
(1510-58), and which exactly preceded that of Francis 
Bacon, the so-called ‘‘ Father of Modern Philosophy,” 
of which he knew so much less than little, but regard- 
ing the probable value of which he preached with 
something resembling prophetic inspiration. +: 
’ Let the. reader who would estimate the value of 
popular reputation now remember that not only was, 
as we have just been reminded, the great Cambrian 
man of science the first to ‘‘use the sign = to denote 
equality,’ and the first who wrote in English on 
arithmetic and geometry respectively, and to treat the 
doctrine of ‘‘the sphere’’ in the same language; he 
was also the discoverer of the method of extracting 
the square root of multinomial algebraic expressions ; 
his ‘‘Whetstone of Witte" was the first English book 
to use the signs + and —; and he was “the first Briton 
(in all probability) who adopted the system of Coper- 
nicus ’’—a system which (horribile dictu) Francis Bacon 
remained, in the following generation, permanently 
unable to comprehend, just as he could neither under- 
stand nor accept the circulation of the blood, although 
he had been ‘‘puddering in physicke all his life,” and 
his medical adviser was William Harvey himself! 
His ‘“‘ Urinall of Physicke’’ survives as one of the valu- 
able rarities of medical literature, and contains many 
observations which could be utilised to save the latter- 
day bacteriological pathologist much trouble—and in- 
vention! And not only was he a pioneer in mathe- 
matics, physics, and medicine, he also was, as we learn 
from the ‘ Dictionary of National Biography,” “ deeply 
skilled in rhetoric, philosophy, polite literature, his- 
tory, cosmogony, astronomy, astrology, physic, music, 
mineralogy, and every branch of natural history.”’ No 
wonder that he found no time to thimblerig for a 
knighthood (but this was long before the degrading 
Baboo-Yahoo and Blunderboar-Bulephant creations), 
or that he died in gaol—not for manslaughter, ‘but. for 
debt, Joun Knorr. 
Royal Collese of Surgeons, Dublin, © ~ y 
November to. 
———~ = — oe 
