Dactylography

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Faulds Henry. Dactylography

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: EARLY HINTS AND RECENT PROGRESS

CHAPTER II. SWEAT-PORES, RIDGES AND FURROWS

CHAPTER III. FINGER-PRINT PATTERNS

CHAPTER IV. SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS IN DACTYLOGRAPHY

CHAPTER V. TECHNIQUE OF PRINTING AND SCRUTINIZING FINGER-PATTERNS

CHAPTER VI. PERSISTENCE OF PATTERNS

CHAPTER VII. THE SYLLABIC CLASSIFICATION OF FINGER-PRINTS

CHAPTER VIII. PRACTICAL RESULTS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF DACTYLOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY. OF SOME TERMS USED BY DACTYLOGRAPHERS

SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOOTNOTES:

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Dactylography deals with what is of scientific interest and practical value in regard to the lineations in the skin on the fingers and toes, or rather on the hands and feet of men, monkeys, and allied tribes, which lineations form patterns of great variety and persistence. The Greeks used the term δάκτυλος του̑ ποδός (daktylos tou podos, finger of the foot) for a toe; and the toes are of almost as much interest to the dactylographer as the fingers, and present similar patterns for study.

In primitive times the savage hunter had to use all his wits sharply in the examination of foot and toe marks, whether of the game he pursued or the human foe he guarded against, and he learned to deduce many a curious lesson with Sherlock Holmes-like acuteness and precision. The recency, the rate of motion, the length of stride, the degree of fatigue, the number, and kinds and conditions of men or beasts that had impressed their traces on the soil, all could be read by him with ease and promptness. Such imprints have been preserved in early Mexican picture writings.

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Bewick sometimes jestingly left his sign-mark on his fine wood-engravings, and those thus attested by his thumb-print are now specially valued.

Many references occur in modern literature to fingerprints, and in David Copperfield, published in complete form in 1850, Charles Dickens tells how Dan’l Peggotty, in the old boat-house at Yarmouth, “printed off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he found.”

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