SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS IN DACTYLOGRAPHY.
In this chapter I propose to bring together a few important points of a biological character, which are so vital that even in so curtailed a discussion they cannot be ignored. We shall also glance—it must literally be the merest glance—at the problem of man’s genetic descent, in so far as it begins now to be illumined, however faintly, by a comparative study of finger-prints. Comparatively little of a final character has as yet been achieved, but there are now not a few active and intelligent observers in many lands, and the scientific results often attained under the greatest difficulties are so far greatly encouraging. Fortunately the day has long passed away when it can be considered irreverent to enquire modestly as to who were one’s ancestors. In a very true biological sense every human individual is known to have run through a scale of existence, beginning from the lowest mono-cellular organism, through something like a tadpole or salamander, into a vertebrate and mammal type, not easily to be discriminated from the undeveloped young of rat, or pig, or monkey. Now, if he is not in any way individually degraded by this actually demonstrable course of development, why should he be thought racially degraded by an honest scientific effort to trace the origin of his species from lowly animal ancestry? The process may be slower, but is no less determined by divinely established law. Our grandfathers believed that the Creator breathed into the organized and shapely form of Adam (= “a man”) a portion of the divine spirit, by which he became a living soul, and forthwith took his dignified place in nature. To me the old story, when retold in more modern and exact phrase, leads us to an entirely hopeful and inspiring conception of the origin and evolutionary destiny of our race.
When we approach the threshold of man’s first appearance on the globe, we have reached a geologic epoch when our sober earth seems to have sown most of its wild oats. Its “crust” is pretty stable, and at least in its broad distribution of sea and land, it does not seem to differ very greatly from what its appearance presents on a modern physiographical map. Minor differences there must have been, as even our modern English coast-line shows, and there may have been other conditions than now exist to account for many of man’s early migrations, but those differences are still matters of discussion. There were, possibly, enough certain bridge-like links between lands now apart and separated by wide stretches of sea, but, as a rule, such conclusions have been deductively reached, and are not definitely established on scientific evidence.
After rising above one-celled to more complicated organisms, we reach a class of creatures in which a radiate or wheel-like form obtains, that is, radial symmetry, as in jelly-fish, star-fish, urchins, and sea-anemones.
Fishes occupy, perhaps, about the lowest level among the back-boned or vertebrate animals, and we may readily notice that some of their fins occur in symmetrically arranged pairs, while others, again, occur singly. Now with this arrangement of such appendages in pairs symmetrically arranged there begins the appearance of something definitely like what we mean by limbs. Some present-day fishes use some of their fins as legs to clamber and crawl on rocks or ashore. I remember seeing, in a Japanese tea-house by the solitary sea-shore, not far from where the great arsenal of Yokoska now hums busily, a very beautiful gurnard, blue as to its outspread wings like the sapphire gurnard. Those fins were painted like the wings of a butterfly, and it crawled about in the limited sea-water, on rocks, under cliffs, and among sea-weed, with butterfly-like legs or processes from the roots of those wing-like fins. With such a special adaptation of their fins, fishes began to conquer the land. Seals and whales, as is well known, are mammals which have been driven back again to the sea.
Thesing, in his suggestive Lectures on Biology (English translation, p. 13), says:—
“All extremities of the higher vertebrates, however widely they may differ in construction, may be traced back biogenetically to the so-called Ichthyopterygium, as we see it in the lower shark-like fishes. Unequal growth of the single skeleton parts and a considerable reduction in their numbers transformed the Ichthyopterygium into the five-fingered extremity characteristic of all vertebrates from the amphibians upwards.”
Anthropoid Lineations.
a, from hand of orang, left index;
b, from foot of chimpanzee, left index;
c, from foot of orang, left index.
Of course the great end of an animal is at first to fill its own belly, and in order to do this, if fixed as some molluscs are, it must contrive to bring nutriment within its reach, and if mobile limbs come to be developed to achieve locomotion, by fin in water, limb on land, and wing in air. After the vertebrate and mammal stage was achieved, the five-fingered limb takes various forms, as the paddle of the whale or wing of the bat. There are three great periods in geological development of animals—the Primary, which is, roughly speaking, the typical period of fishes; the Secondary, when reptiles prevail; and the Tertiary, the great age of mammals. Many geologists recognize a fourth period, the Post-Tertiary, Quaternary, or Diluvian, when existing species have been established. It is not till this latest period has arrived that we can detect unmistakable evidences of man. There are, however, many reasons which lead to the conclusion that his racial roots go still further back in time. Did he arise as a “mutation,” one of those rare sudden changes observed to take place even at the present time, by which a species suddenly departs from its ancestral type and is transformed? Let us briefly look at the main facts of mammalian ascent. The great herbivorous reptiles—some do not seem to have been strictly herbivorous—do not seem to lead us far on our path. Widely spread throughout the world, the Theriomorphs or beast-shaped reptiles seem to approach the mammal type, but they were too helpless and unwieldy, and had little brain-power wherewith to direct their energies. The earliest genuine mammals were small, not only relatively to those great creatures, but really little, rat-like rodents. Then we find arboreal creatures, driven to the trees for refuge and for food, squirrel-like animals, agile to escape from their monstrous but clumsy and stupid foes on the ground, and using their paws nimbly as hands to grasp and tear, or to break nuts and other food.
Lemur-like animals (lemuroids) then come on the stage, and among them—among the earliest of them—we begin to detect traces, on feet and hands, of those patterned ridges, the beginnings of which we have been seeking. Hand and brain and voice are the trinity of social construction. The spider and the mantis (or praying insect) have nimble, hand-like organs—very striking and conspicuous in the mantis; the chameleon among reptiles, the parrot among birds, the squirrel among lower mammals, all have somewhat hand-like organs used in hand-like ways; but when we reach the higher mammals, the sense of touch is finely intertwined with the power of varied and discriminative grasping, pressing, or rubbing. The elephant, which appears at first in the strata as about the size of a dog, grows in size and brain power as the ages roll along. But his path seems now to be closing. With his sagacious brain, and prehensile, sensitive trunk, he can do wonders, but, like the horse, he is likely to be passed by; the great tool-maker finding it easy now to make bearers swifter or more powerful than they are.
It is in man and the anthropoid apes that we first find the correspondence between hand and brain that promises mastery. The ugly, painted mandrill, even, has beautiful lady-like hands and takes care of them like a lady. All the higher apes show complicated finger-patterns like those of man.
The rugæ in apes and men seem clearly to have served a most useful purpose in aiding the firm grasp of hands or feet, a very vital point in creatures living an arboreal life, as they and their racial predecessors are now presumed to have done. In that case, however, would not one pattern, a simple one, have done as well as any other? Here, then, the great balancing principles of variation and heredity come into operation. The variety of patterns is immense, and for aught we know new ones may be being evolved at the present time. Here again, heredity comes in, for there is certainly some tendency to repeat in a quite general way the pattern of sire in the hands and feet of son. I have as yet found no quite close correspondence of detail in any case brought under my own notice. The question of identifying a person on one or two lineations involves so many practical problems of obscurity in printing and the like, that it is more appropriate for discussion in another chapter.
In a work published last year on Science and the Criminal, by Mr. C. Ainsworth Mitchell, after quoting a reference I made on one occasion to the influence of heredity in sometimes dominating finger-patterns, the author goes on to say: “While there is questionably a general tendency for a particular type of finger-prints to be inherited just as any other bodily peculiarities are liable to be passed on from the parents to the children, there is by no means that definite relationship that Dr. Faulds hoped to establish.” The full passage in my paper in Nature referred to, was this:—
“The dominancy of heredity through these infinite varieties is sometimes very striking. I have found unique patterns in a parent repeated with marvellous accuracy in his child. Negative results, however, might prove nothing in regard to parentage, a caution which it is important to make.”
The truth is, I have very frequently emphasized the fact that in such similar patterns in sire and son there is no real danger of false identification where several fingers are compared in their proper serial order. It is not even likely that two such fingers would agree exactly in lineations, number, curvature, etc., if carefully measured in the way set forth in this work.
A more remarkable criticism is to be found in p. 63, thus: “The existence of racial peculiarities in finger-prints, which Dr. Faulds believed that he had discovered in the case of the Japanese, has not been borne out by the experience of others.” The author then mentions some observations on this point by Galton, who thought that “the width of the ridges appeared to be more uniform and their direction more parallel in the finger-prints of negroes than in those of other races.” The word “negroes” here is delightfully vague in an ethnological discussion. I have written nothing to justify the above remark. My belief has long been that there is no racial difference of yellow, white, red, or black, to use the good old Egyptian classification, but that the human family is one, and that view (right or wrong) was enunciated often by me in Japan, both by speech and pen. Mr. Mitchell’s strange misconception must surely be based on my words in the article by me quoted above, where, after enumerating some elements in patterns from different races, I go on distinctly to say: “These instances are not intended to stand for typical patterns of the two peoples, but simply as illustrations of the kind of facts to be observed.”
I had pleasure in giving my subscription and support to the recent First Universal Races Congress, which has done much, I believe, to consolidate scientific opinion as to the essential unity of our kind, a belief not so old or universal as many think, dating, indeed, not much more than a century back, if so far, as a scientific opinion, not biassed by the slave interest.
Of much more importance now is the relation to human beings to the great anthropoid stocks.
It is usual to separate the lemurs, which have strong affinities to monkeys and to men, from the anthropoids, or man-like apes, forming two great orders of
Lemuroidea, and
Anthropoidea.
In 1909, however, a paper was published by the Zoological Society of London, in which this separation is considered to be no longer justifiable, so that the lemurs and big man-like apes (orang, chimpanzee, and gorilla) would no longer be held as separate orders or sub-orders. There were some who hoped to show that the races of men corresponded to three primitive anthropoid stocks, linked to the three kinds of anthropoid apes. Whether the new view be correct or not, and there is something to be said in its favour, there can be no reasonable doubt now as to the close affinity which those creatures have to ourselves and to one another.
When we first encounter remains of man or his close predecessor in the records of the rocks, he was a dweller in holes and caves of the earth. He certainly did not make pots of any kind, or at least he has left no such remains. Probably he had no such companions even as the domestic dog or cat, no cattle, not at first any kind of grain crop. He lived on roots and fruits, hunted, and fished. Those early people have often been called Troglodytes, from the Greek τρώγλη, a cave.
Professor Keith, the learned curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, has advanced the theory that about the middle of the Miocene Age a group of creatures existed, having affinities to man as he now is, which group the professor names Proto-troglodytes. From these sprung three classes of Troglodytes, namely:
The Gorilla;
The Chimpanzee;
Man.
Some eighty-seven anatomical features are said to be possessed by the gorilla in common with man only, while the chimpanzee has ninety-eight such features as belong to man. The gorilla has the best and biggest teeth, and in this respect progressive deterioration went on through the orang-utan and the chimpanzee to man. According to the estimate of Professor Keith, there are not in the whole world, at present, more than 100,000 chimpanzee, and some 10,000 gorillas.
The subject of twins is likely in future to be very interesting in relation to the resemblance of their finger-patterns. The distinction is now made of twins proceeding from one zygote or fertilized ovum, and twins proceeding each from different fertilized ova. In the first case, it is supposed that the twins are necessarily of the same sex, while in the other, each twin child may be of the sex determined by the fertilized ovum from which it sprung. Clearly, in the latter case it might often happen that both twins might be male, or both female.
Dr. Berry Hart quotes from the records of another observer (Wilder) in which there was a pair of “identical” twins, in whom the similarity was complete even to the finger-prints. [Brit. Med. Jour., July 29th, 1911, p. 215.] I have found in the same family male and female with resembling finger-prints, but none which could be called identical, but opportunities of comparing twins of the same sex do not often occur. While writing this chapter I examined twins of the same sex (female). Their finger-prints are very similar, but details diverge in many directions. The matter merits close attention. But how are we to determine that twins of the same sex are from one ovum, seeing that there might be a coincidence of twins of the same sex proceeding from separate ova? If their finger-prints are “identical,” is that the main evidence? or do identity of features, colour of hair, voice, manners, and character, come up independently? If one questions the theory, the “identity” must be very complete indeed, to give it vraisemblance, for how often do we not find that children of the same parents, not twins, but born with many years intervening, show most striking resemblance? The alleged complete identity of finger-patterns, however, is a most interesting and novel point, and ought to receive close attention from parents and physicians. A curious fact about hereditary resemblance is this, which I have frequently observed. A child resembles, say, a mother as a rule, but at some emotional, angry, or vexed moment, lines are marked in the face by muscular movements which bring out like a mask a striking likeness, say, of the father, or of some other progenitor. Besides this, a child at different stages may resemble in succession different near relatives, and in a very striking degree resemble them. But with regard to finger-patterns there is no such variability. Even a month or two before a child is born its little heraldic crest begins to be firmly fixed for each finger, as it is to be throughout life.
The disease called Acromegaly, or giant growth, involves great expansion of the ridges and furrows, but no case of actual change of patterns has been observed as yet. The attention of medical men should be given to this affection in regard to modification of linear arrangement.
The likeness or divergence of finger-patterns in neighbouring supernumerary fingers and toes might yield interesting results if carefully recorded. Extra fingers are commoner than extra toes. The webbing of fingers, as in the chimpanzee, might also be noticed, and any association with retrograde patterns, in the fingers concerned.
The rapid growth of a literature of Criminology is partly the result of better methods of identification. It is unscientific to reason about the personal peculiarities of all the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, when Tom may be Dick, or Dick Harry under a different alias. The criminologist can now use his prison statistics as to age, habits, and the like, with much greater confidence and precision. In an interesting, but somewhat reckless work on “Criminal Man,” which summarizes the teaching of the eminent Italian authority on the anatomy and psychology of the criminal—of the Italian criminal at least—Cesare Lombroso, we are told (p. 20): “Long fingers are common to swindlers, thieves, sexual offenders, and pickpockets. The lines on the palmar surfaces of the finger-tips are often of a simple nature, as in the anthropoids.” But they are not, necessarily, of a simple nature in the anthropoids, but often highly ornate and complex in their ramifications. In the lower monkeys they are much simpler, and Sir F. Galton thought it was so sometimes in the negro peoples. Indeed, one is not surprised to meet such simple lineation patterns now and again in cultivated people, without any criminal taint, or negro blood, or any anti-socialistic tendencies that can be easily detected. A cautious prison doctor in Glasgow, Dr. Devon, has written a clever book which gives much food for sober reflection. He seems to say that the criminal is not a kind of species by himself: “If those who come to prison for the first time were made the subject of examination, it would be found that they are principally remarkable for the absence of what the books call criminal characteristics.” (p. 11.)