I. Thirteen cases of more or less congruity between the number of A and B entries under the same head:—5-7; 5-7; 5-8; 6-8; 7-10; 8-9; 8-12; 9-12; 10-10; 11-13; 12-16; 14-18; 72-73. (This last refers to loops on the middle finger.)II. Six cases of more or less incongruity:—1-7; 6-12; 14-20; 14-22; 22-35; 39-50.
I. Thirteen cases of more or less congruity between the number of A and B entries under the same head:—5-7; 5-7; 5-8; 6-8; 7-10; 8-9; 8-12; 9-12; 10-10; 11-13; 12-16; 14-18; 72-73. (This last refers to loops on the middle finger.)
II. Six cases of more or less incongruity:—1-7; 6-12; 14-20; 14-22; 22-35; 39-50.
The three Tables, XXIV., XXV., XXVI., contain the results of the tabulations and the deductions from them.
Table XXIV.
Comparison of three Fingers of the Right Hand in 150 Fraternal Couplets.
Table XXV.
Comparison between Random and Observed Events.
Table XXVI.
Centesimal Scale (to nearest whole numbers).
Table XXIV. contains all the Observed events, and is to be read thus, beginning at the first entry. Pattern No. 1 occurs on the right fore-finger fifteen times among the A brothers, and twelve times among the B brothers; while in four of these cases both brothers have that same pattern.
Table XXV. compares the Random events with the Observed ones. Every case in which the calculated expectation is equal to or exceeds 0·05, is inserted in detail; the remaining group of petty cases are summed together and their totals entered in the bottom line. For fear of misapprehension or forgetfulness, one other example of the way in which the Randoms are calculated will be given here, taking for the purpose the first entry in Table XXIV. Thus, the number of all the different combinations of the 150 A with the 150 B individuals in the 150 couplets, is 150 × 150. Out of these, the number of double events in which pattern No. 1 would appear in the same combination, is 15 × 12 = 180. Therefore in 150 trials, the double event of pattern No. 1 would appear upon the average, on 180 divided by 150, or on 1·20 occasions. As a matter of fact, it appeared four times. These figures will be found in the first line of Table XXV.; the rest of its contents have been calculated in the same way.
Leaving aside the Randoms that exceed 0 but are less than 1, there are nineteen cases in which the Random may be compared with the Observed values; in all but two of these the Observed are the highest, and in these two the Random exceed the Observed byonly trifling amounts, namely, 5·18 Random against 5·00 Observed; 1·87 Random against 1·00 Observed. It is impossible, therefore, to doubt from the steady way in which the Observed values overtop the Randoms, that there is a greater average likeness in the finger marks of two brothers, than in those of two persons taken at hazard.
Table XXVI. gives the results of applying the centesimal scale to the measurement of the average closeness of fraternal resemblance, in respect to finger prints, according to the method and under the reservations already explained in page 125. The average value thus assigned to it is a little more than 10°. The values obtained from the three fingers severally, from which that average was derived, are 9°, 10°, and 12°; they agree together better than might have been expected. The value obtained from a set of fifty additional couplets of the middle fingers only, of fraternals, is wider, being 21°. Its inclusion with the rest raises the average of all to between 10 and 11.
In the pre-eminently frequent event of loops with an outward slope on the middle finger, it is remarkable that the Random cases are nearly equal to the Observed ones; they are 34·08 to 35·00. It was to obtain some assurance that this equality was not due to statistical accident, that the additional set of fifty couplets were tabulated. They tell, however, the same tale, viz. 6·4 Randoms to 7·0 Observed. The loops on the fore-fingers confirm this, showing 5·18 Randoms to 5·00 Observed; those on the ring-finger have thesame peculiarity, though in a slighter degree, 13 to 16: the average of other patterns shows a much greater difference than that. I am unable to account for this curious behaviour of the loops, which can hardly be due to statistical accident, in the face of so much concurrent evidence.
Twins.—The signs of heredity between brothers and sisters ought to be especially apparent between twins of the same sex, who are physiologically related in a peculiar degree and are sometimes extraordinarily alike. More rarely, they are remarkably dissimilar. The instances of only a moderate family resemblance between twins of the same sex are much less frequent than between ordinary brothers and sisters, or between twins of opposite sex. All this has been discussed in myHuman Faculty. In order to test the truth of the expectation, I procured prints of the fore, middle, and ring-fingers of seventeen sets of twins, and compared them, with the results shown in Table XXVII.
Table XXVII.
17 Sets of Twins(A and B).
Comparison between the patterns on the Fore, Middle, and Ring-fingers respectively of the Right hand.
Agreement (=), 19 cases; partial (··), 13 cases; disagreement (×), 19 cases.
The result is that out of the seventeen sets (=51 couplets), two sets agree in all their three couplets of fingers; four sets agree in two; five sets agree in one of the couplets. There are instances of partial agreement in five others, and a disagreement throughout in only one of the seventeen sets. In another collection of seventeen sets, made to compare with this, six agreed in two of their three couplets, and five agreed in one of them. There cannot then be the slightest doubt as to the strong tendency to resemblance in the finger patterns in twins.
This remark must by no means be forced into thesense of meaning that the similarity is so great, that the finger print of one twin might occasionally be mistaken for that of the other. When patterns fall into the same class, their general forms may be conspicuously different (seep. 74), while their smaller details, namely, the number of ridges and the minutiæ, are practically independent of the pattern.
It may be mentioned that I have an inquiry in view, which has not yet been fairly begun, owing to the want of sufficient data, namely to determine the minutest biological unit that may be hereditarily transmissible. The minutiæ in the finger prints of twins seem suitable objects for this purpose.
Children of like-patterned Parents.—When two parents are alike, the average resemblance, in stature at all events, which their children bear to them, is as close as the fraternal resemblance between the children, and twice as close as that which the children bear to either parent separately, when the parents are unlike.
The fifty-eight parentages affording fifty couplets of the fore, middle, and ring-fingers respectively give 58 × 3 = 174 parental couplets in all; of these, 27 or 14 per cent are alike in their pattern, as shown by Table XXVIII. The total number of children to these twenty-seven pairs is 109, of which 59 (or 54 per cent) have the same pattern as their parents. This fact requires analysis, as on account of the great frequency of loops, and especially of the pattern No. 42 on the middle finger, a large number of the cases of similarity of pattern between child and parents would be mere random coincidences.
Table XXVIII.—Children of like-patterned Parents.
There are nineteen cases of both parents having the commonest of the loop patterns, No. 42, on a corresponding finger. They have between them seventy-five children, of whom forty-eight have the pattern No. 42, on the same finger as their parents, and eighteen others have loops of other kinds on that same finger, making a total of sixty-six coincidences out of the possible 75, or 88 per cent, which is a great increase upon the normal proportion of loops of the No. 42 pattern in the fore, middle, and ring-fingers collectively. Again, there are three cases of both parents having a tendrilled-loop No. 15, which ranks as a whorl. Out of their total number of seventeen children, eleven have whorls and only six have loops.
Lastly, there is a single case of both parents having an arch, and all their three children have arches; whereas in the total of 109 children in the table, there are only four other cases of an arch.
This partial analysis accounts for the whole of the like-patterned parents, except four couples, which are one of No. 34, two of No. 40, and one of No. 46. These concur in telling the same general tale, recollecting that No. 46 might almost be reckoned as a transitional case between a loop and a whorl.
The decided tendency to hereditary transmission cannot be gainsaid in the face of these results, but the number of cases is too few to justify quantitative conclusions. It is not for the present worth while to extend them, for the reason already mentioned, namely, an ignorance of the allowance that ought to be made for related patterns. On this account it doesnot seem useful to print the results of a large amount of tabulation bearing on the simple filial relationship between the child and either parent separately, except so far as appears in the following paragraph.
Relative Influence of the Father and the Mother.—Through one of those statistical accidents which are equivalent to long runs of luck at a gaming table, a concurrence in the figures brought out by Mr. Collins suggested to him the existence of a decided preponderance of maternal influence in the hereditary transmission of finger patterns. His further inquiries have, however, cast some doubt on earlier and provisional conclusions, and the following epitomises all of value that can as yet be said in favour of the superiority of the maternal influence.
The fore, middle, and ring-fingers of the right hands of the father, mother, and all their accessible children, in many families, were severally tabulated under the fifty-three heads already specified. The total number of children was 389, namely 136 sons and 219 daughters. The same pattern was found on the same finger, both of a child and of one or other of his parents, in the following number of cases:—
Table XXIX.
Relative Influence of Father and Mother.
The entries in the first three columns are not comparable on equal terms, on account of the large difference between the numbers of the sons and daughters. This difference is easily remedied by multiplying the number of daughters by136⁄219, that is by 0·621, as has been done in the fifth column headed Corrected Totals. It would appear from these figures, that the maternal influence is more powerful than the paternal in the proportion of 186 to 149, or as 5 to 4; but, as some of the details from which the totals are built up, vary rather widely, it is better for the present to reserve an opinion as to their trustworthiness.
RACES AND CLASSES
The races whose finger prints I have studied in considerable numbers are English, pure Welsh, Hebrew, and Negro; also some Basques from Cambo in the French Pyrenees, twenty miles south-east of Bayonne. For the Welsh prints I am primarily indebted to the very obliging help of Mr. R. W. Atkinson, of Cardiff, who interested the masters of schools in purely Welsh-speaking mountainous districts on my behalf; for the Hebrew prints to Mr. Isidore Spielman, who introduced me to the great Hebrew schools in London, whose head-masters gave cordial assistance; and for the Negro prints to Sir George Taubman Goldie, Dep. Governor of the Royal Niger Co., who interested Dr Crosse on my behalf, from whom valuable sets of prints were received, together with particulars of the races of the men from whom they were made. As to the Basques, they were printed by myself.
It requires considerable patience and caution to arrive at trustworthy conclusions, but it may emphatically be said that there is nopeculiarpattern whichcharacterises persons of any of the above races. There is no particular pattern that is special to any one of them, which when met with enables us to assert, or even to suspect, the nationality of the person on whom it appeared. The only differences so far observed, are statistical, and cannot be determined except through patience and caution, and by discussing large groups.
I was misled at first by some accidental observations, and as it seemed reasonable to expect to find racial differences in finger marks, the inquiries were continued in varied ways until hard fact had made hope no longer justifiable.
After preliminary study, I handed over the collection of racial finger prints to Mr F. Howard Collins, who kindly undertook the labour of tabulating them in many ways, of which it will be only necessary to give an example. Thus, at one time attention was concentrated on a single finger and a single pattern, the most instructive instance being that of arches on the right fore-finger. They admit of being defined with sufficient clearness, having only one doubtful frontier of much importance, namely that at which they begin to break away into nascent-loops, etc. They also occur with considerable frequency on the fore-finger, so the results from a few hundred specimens ought to be fairly trustworthy. It mattered little in the inquiry, at what level the limit was drawn to separate arches from nascent-loops, so long as the same limit was observed in all races alike. Much pains were taken to secureuniformity of treatment, and Mr. Collins selected two limits, the one based on a strict and the other on a somewhat less strict interpretation of the term “arches,” but the latter was not so liberal as that which I had used myself in the earlier inquiries (see p. 114). His results showed no great difference in the proportionate frequency of arches in the different races, whichever limit was observed; the following table refers to the more liberal limit:—
Table XXX.
Frequency of Arches in the Right Fore-Finger.
The two contrasted values here are the English and the Hebrew. The 1332 cases of the latter give a percentage result of 7·9, which differs as may be seen less than 1 per cent from that of any one of the four large groups upon which the average is based. The 250 cases of English are comparatively few, but the experience I have had of other English prints is so large as to enable me to say confidently that thepercentage result of 13·6 is not too great. It follows, that the percentage of arches in the English and in the Hebrew differs in the ratio of 13·6 to 7·9, or nearly as 5 to 3. This is the largest statistical difference yet met with. The deficiency in arches among the Hebrews, and to some extent in loops also, is made up by a superiority in whorls, chiefly of the tendril or circlet-in-loop patterns.
It would be very rash to suppose that this relative infrequency of arches among the Hebrews was of fundamental importance, considering that such totally distinct races as the Welsh and the Negro have them in an intermediate proportion. Still, why does it occur? The only answer I can suggest is that the patterns being in some degree hereditary, such accidental preponderances as may have existed among a not very numerous ancestry might be perpetuated. I have some reason to believe that local peculiarities of this sort exist in England, the children in schools of some localities seeming to be statistically more alike in their patterns than English children generally.
Another of the many experiments was the tabulation separately by Mr. Collins of the fore, middle, and ring-fingers of the right hand of fifty persons of each of the five races above-mentioned: English, Welsh, Basque, Hebrew, and different groups of Negroes. The number of instances is of course too small for statistical deductions, but they served to make it clear that no very marked characteristic distinguished the races. The impressions from Negroes betray the general clumsiness of their fingers, but their patternsare not, so far as I can find, different from those of others, they are not simpler as judged either by their contours or by the number of origins, embranchments, islands, and enclosures contained in them. Still, whether it be from pure fancy on my part, or from the way in which they were printed, or from some real peculiarity, the general aspect of the Negro print strikes me as characteristic. The width of the ridges seems more uniform, their intervals more regular, and their courses more parallel than with us. In short, they give an idea of greater simplicity, due to causes that I have not yet succeeded in submitting to the test of measurement.
The above are only a few examples of the laborious work so kindly undertaken for me by Mr. F. H. Collins, but it would serve no useful purpose to give more in this book, as no positive results have as yet been derived from it other than the little already mentioned.
The most hopeful direction in which this inquiry admits of being pursued is among the Hill tribes of India, Australian blacks, and other diverse and so-called aboriginal races. The field of ethnology is large, and it would be unwise as yet to neglect the chance of somewhere finding characteristic patterns.
Differences between finger prints of different classes might continue to exist although those of different races are inconspicuous, because every race contains men of various temperaments and faculties, and we cannot tell, except by observation, whether any of these are correlated with the finger marks. Several differentclasses have been examined both by Mr. Collins and myself. The ordinary laboratory work supplies finger prints of persons of much culture, and of many students both in the Art and in the Science schools. I took a large number of prints from the worst idiots in the London district, through the obliging assistance of Dr. Fletcher Beech, of the Darenth Asylum; my collections made at Board Schools are numerous, and I have one of field labourers in Dorsetshire and Somersetshire. But there is no notable difference in any of them. For example; the measurements of the ridge-interval gave the same results in the art-students and in the science-students, and I have prints of eminent thinkers and of eminent statesmen that can be matched by those of congenital idiots.[5]No indications of temperament, character, or ability are to be found in finger marks, so far as I have been able to discover.