Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/138

128 Galton, whose study of the subject has already extended over seven years, calculates that there is only one chance in 64,000,000,000 of the pattern on any human finger being identical with that on any other. If the patterns of three or four fingers (or the prints from them in printer's ink) be compared, all possibility of error is eliminated, while with a set of prints from the whole ten finger's assurance is made doubly and trebly sure. Mr. Galton has published on various phases of this subject from time to time, and in his latest book deals with methods of handling large collections of prints so that reference to them may be simple and rapid. It appears that, with a few border-line exceptions, every print may be classified as a loop, a whorl, or an arch. A loop on the forefinger may open toward the ulnar (little finger) or radial (thumb) side of the hand. Loops on other fingers almost always open toward the ulnar side. Where these particulars are not sufficient, minor points, such as the number of ridges from the nucleus to the outside of a loop, and breaks, junctions, or forks of the lines, etc., which an expert can point out to any intelligent person, will be found conclusive. Mr. Galton presents an abstract of the report of a British departmental committee which fully indorses his system, recommending, however, for registering and identifying habitual criminals that a part of the French system of physical measurements be combined with it. The volume contains a specimen directory of three hundred sets of prints and plates in which nearly two hundred impressions are shown. Mr. Galton suggests that finger prints could be employed also for identifying deserters from the army and detecting impersonators of deceased pensioners. This by no means exhausts their possibilities. What an expensive and troublesome litigation could have been saved if a set of finger prints of the real Tichborne heir had been on file when the "claimant" appeared! An important class of life-insurance frauds would be prevented if the companies should require the taking of finger prints as a part of their physical examination, and the abortive attempt of the United States Government to prevent the personation by Chinese immigrants of fellow-countrymen who had been in the United States and gone home could be made effectual by the same means. Mr. Galton has secured abundant official recognition of his system, and the idea is being brought into wide popular cognizance by Mark Twain's story, cited above, and its dramatization.

No happier choice of a writer to tell The Story of the Plants could have been made than Grant Allen. He knows what to tell in order to give his readers a satisfactory bird's-eye view of the subject, he has a most attractive way of telling it, and, above all, he knows what to leave untold. His story is not a string of definitions nor an annotated catalogue of genera and species. It tells how plants obtain their food, how they grow, rest, and perpetuate themselves, and what means they take to overcome obstacles and protect themselves from dangers. Something is told also about the way plants lived before there was any one to describe them, and how they came to differ from one another so much as they now do. Although it is thus seen that the physiology of plants is given chief prominence, considerable is told as to their anatomy. Thus, when showing that plants eat