ON THE INHERITANCE OF THE FINGER-PIUNT. 
By ETHEL M. ELDERTON, Galton Research Fellow. 
t 
FIRST PAPER. 
(1) Explanatory and Historical. 
The inheritance of finger-print types when once those types have been analysed 
and classified seems an almost ideal subject for the study of heredity in man. It 
would appear at first sight that they would present most excellent material 
for comparing various theories of inheritance and measuring the intensity of 
heredity between the different grades of kinship. Yet as far as I am aware 
nothing has hitherto been published on the subject either from the Biometric or 
the Mendelian standpoint. By 1903, data had been collected and reduced showing 
the degrees of inheritance for many physical characters in both animals and man 
and the collection and reduction of data for the heredity of mental and moi'al 
characteristics in man had been started. It would appear strange that finger- 
print types should remain unregarded, — the " arch," the " loop," the " whorl," the 
" composite " were familiar to many and seemed by their easy determination for 
the purpose of criminal indices to be most appropriate for the study of heredity. 
Two chief difficulties, however, stood in the way. First the great labour of 
collecting in adequate quantities the finger-prints of relatives; and secondly the 
still r/iore important fact that while four or five broad categories were ade(juate 
for a criminal index, they were inadequate for scientific distinctions. Galton at 
first ran up his four or five categories to 53, and the continual appearance of 
transitional forms led him further and further in the sense of finger-print con- 
tinuity. Without exaggeration one can say that he sought for years for quanti- 
tative measures of the finger-print*, which might be applied to any type, and 
that, when he had appreciated continuity, it was this flxilure to obtain quantitative 
measurement which ultimately led him to put the problem on one side. Never- 
theless those who were intimate with him in the last ten years of his life know 
the prominent part which the inheritance of finger-print types played both in his 
thoughts and activities. 
* The Galton Laboratory possesses a great variety of cameras and other apparatus for enlarging, 
orientating and measuring finger-prints designed by Galton. Many of tliese, especially tlio^e for angular 
measurements on the finger-print, are now, failing any memorandum of purpose, hardly interpretable. 
