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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIX 



a hundred natural specimens of the same two words, and if judges 

 of the training of tellers in banks had been given the task of sepa- 

 rating the two hundred specimens into the hundred by individual 

 A and the hundred by individual B, the percentage of failures 

 would have been considerable. These specimens, that is, may 

 illustrate the possibility of successful forgery without artifice. 



In general, of course, the experiment shows how very, very 

 rare the case of substantially perfect resemblance of two natural 

 signatures by different individuals will be. One case amongst 72 

 pairs of twins probably signifies less than one-case in a thousand 

 amongst the general population of as close resemblance as 145 



