FINGER PRINTS. The individual distinctiveness that attaches to the pap illary ridges on the palms of the hand, their unchanging characteristic through life, and their broad variations as be tween one individual and another, are the traits that have led to their study and classification for purposes of per sonal identification. These characteris tics apply especially to the patterns of the fingers, and the circumstance has re sulted in much effort among men of science so to facilitate subdivision in cases where such identification is likely to be necessary as to make identification easily available. Up to the present the chief purpose to which the use of finger prints has been put to secure identifica tion has been in the case of criminal classes, but there are not wanting those who see in it uses in many other direc tions, as in important legal documents where something more certain than mere signature is desirable, and in the army and navy during war. In wills
and similar documents the use of the finger print would render forgery al most impossible, while it is an easily available substitute for a signature in the case of an illiterate. In the case of criminal identification, finger prints are now largely in use as a supplement to the Bertillon system, and the combi nation of the two systems leaves little chance for error. Occasionally finger prints left on doors, windows, and pol ished surfaces in the course of the com mission of a crime have led to the iden tification of the perpetrators, but suc cess in these cases is not easily ob tainable from the imperfect character of the imprints and the difficulty in ade quately reproducing them.