Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Finger prints / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![Enough was then seen to show that the subject was of real importance, and I resolved to investigate it; all the more so, as the modern processes of |)hoto- graphic printing would enable the evidence of such results as might be arrived at, to be presented to the reader on an enlarged and easily legible form, and in a trustworthy shape. Those that are put forward in the following pages, admit of considerable extension and improvement, and it is only the fact that an account of them seems useful, which causes me to delay no further before submitting what has thus far been attained, to the criticism of others. I have already published the following memoirs upon this subject: 1. Personal Identification. Journal Eoyal Inst 25t]i May 1888, and Nature, 28tli June 1888. 2. Patterns in Thumb and Finger Marks. Phil. Trans. Royal Society, vol. clxxxii. (1891) b. pp. 1-23. [This almost wholly referred to thumb marks.] 3. Method of Indexing Finger Marks. Froc. Royal Society, vol. xlix. (1891). 4. Identification by Finger Tips. Nineteenth Century, August 1891. This first and introductory chapter contains a brief and orderly summary of the contents of those that follow. The second chapter treats of the previous employ- ment of finger prints among various nations, which has been almost wholly confined to making daubs, without paying any regard to the delicate lineations with which this book is alone concerned. Their object was partly superstitious and partly ceremonial; superstitious, so far as a personal contact between](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21053741_0023.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
