VARIATION AND HEREDITY IN TWINS 173 



the twins to be classed as identical had not the palm 

 prints been found different. 



Of twins No. X, Wilder says: 



These twins caused me some little difficulty, although they 

 show by the formulae great differences and determine the set 

 as fraternal beyond a doubt. The subjects are little girls of 

 ten, whom I have seen but once, and at the time I took it for 

 granted that they were duplicates, and as they came to my 

 laboratory hand-in-hand, dressed exactly alike, and each with 

 her hair in two small braids, they were certainly similar, but to 

 my assistant they did not appeal in the same way, and she judged 

 them fraternal before seeing the prints. There is a noticeable 

 difference in height and quite a little in weight, greater than is 

 usually found in true duplicates. 



Again, it is highly probable that this pair is mono- 

 zygotic, although there is a variation in the distribution 

 of patterns in the two individuals. Even an examina- 

 tion of finger-prints reveals a very close similarity, the 

 difference being in the palms of the right hands. Sole- 

 prints are not mentioned. 



Of twins No. XIII, Wilder says: 



According to personal appearance these should be duplicates. 

 I have never seen them, but the one who took the prints wrote: 

 "The Misses .... are so similar in coloring and features that 

 even tjieir best friends confuse them." It must be confessed, how- 

 ever, that the differences in the formulae cannot be reconciled, 

 and that the palms are, and remain, in respect to the main lines, 

 very different. They both possess, however, certain peculiar 

 markings in common, as the thenar patterns in the left hands, or 

 the hypothenar convergence in the right hands, facts which would 

 help matters out were there any hope of reconciling the lines. I 

 must leave this as a totally aberrant case and treat it as such 

 in the summary given below. In the other two cases that have 

 caused trouble, Nos. VII and X, the resemblance is not so striking 



