ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICKOSCOPY, ETC. 857 



can determine (not so easy or safe a task as might be supposed) the 

 relative age of superposed, crossing, or touching lines ; and it can 

 generally state positively whether lines were written before or after 

 related erasures, or scratchings, or foldings, or crumplings of the 

 paper. In one important case my friend, Mr. Wm. E. Hagan, of 

 Troy, who has given extensive and very successful attention to the 

 study of writing, especially imitative writing, and in association with 

 whom many of my own investigations in this field during the last 

 dozen years have been carried on, established the date of the docu- 

 ment by recognizing in the paper, fibres which had only recently been 

 used in paper-making, and which, in connection with corroborative 

 proofs to which they led, demonstrated that the paper was manu- 

 factured at a later date than that claimed by the writing upon it. 



To discuss the subject of imitative writing would require the 

 opportunities of a book, not of a fraction of a lecture ; and many con- 

 siderations of recognized importance connected with it are still under 

 investigation and not sufficiently mature for publication. A few hints 

 may be given in respect to those points which are well established 

 and most generally applicable. 



When a word, in a fictitious signature, for instance, has been con- 

 structed by tracing it with pencil lines over an original one, and 

 subsequently inking it over with a pen, particles of plumbago can 

 probably be somewhere detected and recognized by their position and 

 their well-known colour and lustre. The mechanical effect of the point 

 of a pencil upon and among the fibres of the paper can also be seen, not- 

 withstanding the subsequent staining of the paper by the ink. This 

 clumsy method of copying carries its own means of detection, and still 

 it is not more easily recognized than are methods that are more subtle 

 and seem more dangerous. 



In writing copied or imitated originally in ink, either by tracing 

 it over a copy or by drawing it freehand with a copy to inspect or to 

 remember, the distribution of ink is peculiar and suggestive, indicating 

 hesitation from uncertainty, or pauses to look at a copy, or to recall a 

 style, or to decide as to a future course, just at points where a person 

 writing automatically by his own method, and especially in writing 

 his own name or a scarcely less familiar business formula, would pass 

 over the paper most rapidly and promptly. 



Again, there are certain ear-marks, results of habit, which finally 

 become as natural as it is to breathe, and which characterize the 

 writing of difi'erent individuals. Such are peculiar forms and styles 

 of letters and of combinations of letters; methods of beginning or 

 of ending lines, letters, words, or sentences ; methods and places of 

 shading or breaking lines, and of dotting, crossing, patching or correct- 

 ing ; habits of correcting or not correcting certain errors or omissions ; 

 the use of flourishes ; and peculiar ways of connecting words or of dis- 

 sociating syllables. In imitative writing these ear-marks of another 

 ownership are generally copied with ostentatious prominence, if not 

 with real exaggeration, in the capital letters and other prominent 

 parts, but lost sight of in those less conspicuous places where imitation 

 naturally becomes feeble and the habit of the writer unconsciously 



