Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/404

400 pattern only, which occasionally occurs in this region, and which, when present, defines the territory below it as 3 and that above it as 5. A line entering it and returning along its lower side would be designated as 4/3 (Fig. 4, d), one emerging above as 4/5 and one that becomes involved in the pattern and does not emerge is simply 4.

When a pattern is not present in this region, 3 may signify approximately the lower third of the entire outer margin, and 5 the remainder.

In the majority of cases a main line will terminate in one of three ways, it will either (1) open freely along the outer margin; (2) cut through an interspace between fingers or (3) it may fuse with another main line, forming a loop. In this latter case each of the two lines involved may be considered as terminating in the triradius of origin of the other and be described by the corresponding number. Aside from these three possibilities, there is an occasional fourth one produced by the presence of what may be designated lower triradii. So far as has actually been observed (in above 600 hands) these may occur in but two places, as designated in the diagram (Fig. 3) by inverted s in the 2d and 4th of the digital interspaces (counting that between the thumb and the first finger as the 1st), but there is morphological ground for expecting one also in a corresponding position in the 3d interspace. When a main line terminates in one of these triradii it should be designated by a, with an exponent signifying the space to which the belongs; thus 7 or 11 as the case may be. In addition to these, pattern triradii may occur in connection with the thenar and hypothenar patterns, and of these the second, 11, comes into occasional relation with line A.

Having now a method by which the course of the four main lines may be designated by means of a sequence of four figures, let us illustrate this by a few cases taken at random, and represented by the tracings given in Fig. 4.

For these the main line formulæ will be as follows:

 (a)5.7.9.11. (b)5.5.9. 9. (c)2.7.8. 11. (d)6.9.10.