In the prehistoric flint-holes at Brandon, in Suffolk, there was found some years ago a pick made from the horn of an extinct elk. This had been used by some flint-digger of the stone age to hew out of the chalk the rough flints which were subsequently made into scrapers and arrow-heads. Upon the dark handle of this instrument were the finger-prints in chalk of the workman, who, thousands of years ago, flung it down for the last time.
It is strange to reflect that in these perishable impressions he had left a far more permanent record of his identity than he could have done by any other conceivable means.
A striking feature in the scriptural account of the death of Jezebel is that her body was devoured by the dogs, which left nothing but the skull and the palms of her hands and soles of her feet, so that no man might say “this is Jezebel.” Yet, as Sir Francis Galton pointed out, it was upon those parts that the dogs had spared that Jezebel carried the only certain proofs of her identity.
The question of heredity in finger-prints is not only interesting but might also conceivably be a point of some importance in a criminal trial.
Dr. Faulds concluded that heredity played a great part in the particular form of the markings. “The dominancy of heredity in these patterns is sometimes very striking. I have found unique patterns in a parent repeated with marvellous accuracy in his child.”
He suggested that there might thus possibly be an Orton type of pattern and a Tichborne type, to one or other of which experts might have referred the finger impressions of the claimant in the celebrated case.
While there is unquestionably 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 observations made by Sir Francis Galton upon this point, and the mathematical considerations based upon them render it impossible to doubt that the average resemblance between the finger-prints of two brothers or of a brother and sister is greater than in those of two persons selected at random.
The general similarities in the finger-prints in rows A and B in the plate ([p. 66]), which are those of two sisters, are obvious.
The case of twins is particularly interesting, for it is well known that when of the same sex they frequently show remarkable physical and mental resemblances or the reverse. Here, too, it was found by Sir Francis Galton that the finger-prints exhibited a strong tendency to similarity, although in no case were the resemblances so close that the prints of one twin could be mistaken for those of the other.