SOME BIOLOGICAL QUESTIONS IN DACTYLOGRAPHY.
In this chapter I propose to bring together a few important points of
a biological character, which are so vital that even in so curtailed
a discussion they cannot be ignored. We shall also glance--it must
literally be the merest glance--at the problem of man’s genetic
descent, in so far as it begins now to be illumined, however faintly,
by a comparative study of finger-prints. Comparatively little of a
final character has as yet been achieved, but there are now not a few
active and intelligent observers in many lands, and the scientific
results often attained under the greatest difficulties are so far
greatly encouraging. Fortunately the day has long passed away when it
can be considered irreverent to enquire modestly as to who were one’s
ancestors. In a very true biological sense every human individual
is known to have run through a scale of existence, beginning from
the lowest mono-cellular organism, through something like a tadpole
or salamander, into a vertebrate and mammal type, not easily to be
discriminated from the undeveloped young of rat, or pig, or monkey.
Now, if he is not in any way individually degraded by this actually
demonstrable course of development, why should he be thought racially
degraded by an honest scientific effort to trace the origin of his
species from lowly animal ancestry? The process may be slower, but
is no less determined by divinely established law. Our grandfathers
believed that the Creator breathed into the organized and shapely form
of Adam (= “a man”) a portion of the divine spirit, by which he became
a living soul, and forthwith took his dignified place in nature. To
me the old story, when retold in more modern and exact phrase, leads
us to an entirely hopeful and inspiring conception of the origin and
evolutionary destiny of our race.
When we approach the threshold of man’s first appearance on the
globe, we have reached a geologic epoch when our sober earth seems
to have sown most of its wild oats. Its “crust” is pretty stable,
and at least in its broad distribution of sea and land, it does not
seem to differ very greatly from what its appearance presents on a
modern physiographical map. Minor differences there must have been,
as even our modern English coast-line shows, and there may have been
other conditions than now exist to account for many of man’s early
migrations, but those differences are still matters of discussion.
There were, possibly, enough certain bridge-like links between lands
now apart and separated by wide stretches of sea, but, as a rule, such
conclusions have been deductively reached, and are not definitely
established on scientific evidence.
After rising above one-celled to more complicated organisms, we reach
a class of creatures in which a radiate or wheel-like form obtains,
that is, radial symmetry, as in jelly-fish, star-fish, urchins, and
sea-anemones.
Fishes occupy, perhaps, about the lowest level among the back-boned
or vertebrate animals, and we may readily notice that some of their
fins occur in symmetrically arranged pairs, while others, again,
occur singly. Now with this arrangement of such appendages in pairs
symmetrically arranged there begins the appearance of something
definitely like what we mean by limbs. Some present-day fishes use
some of their fins as legs to clamber and crawl on rocks or ashore. I
remember seeing, in a Japanese tea-house by the solitary sea-shore, not
far from where the great arsenal of Yokoska now hums busily, a very
beautiful gurnard, blue as to its outspread wings like the sapphire
gurnard. Those fins were painted like the wings of a butterfly, and it
crawled about in the limited sea-water, on rocks, under cliffs, and
among sea-weed, with butterfly-like legs or processes from the roots
of those wing-like fins. With such a special adaptation of their fins,
fishes began to conquer the land. Seals and whales, as is well known,
are mammals which have been driven back again to the sea.
Thesing, in his suggestive _Lectures on Biology_ (English translation,
p. 13), says:--
“All extremities of the higher vertebrates, however widely they
may differ in construction, may be traced back biogenetically
to the so-called Ichthyopterygium, as we see it in the lower
shark-like fishes. Unequal growth of the single skeleton parts
and a considerable reduction in their numbers transformed the
Ichthyopterygium into the five-fingered extremity characteristic of
all vertebrates from the amphibians upwards.”
[Illustration: ANTHROPOID LINEATIONS.
_a_, from hand of orang, left index;
_b_, from foot of chimpanzee, left index;
_c_, from foot of orang, left index.]
Of course the great end of an animal is at first to fill its own
belly, and in order to do this, if fixed as some molluscs are, it must
contrive to bring nutriment within its reach, and if mobile limbs come
to be developed to achieve locomotion, by fin in water, limb on land,
and wing in air. After the vertebrate and mammal stage was achieved,
the five-fingered limb takes various forms, as the paddle of the
whale or wing of the bat. There are three great periods in geological
development of animals--the Primary, which is, roughly speaking, the
typical period of fishes; the Secondary, when reptiles prevail; and the
Tertiary, the great age of mammals. Many geologists recognize a fourth
period, the Post-Tertiary, Quaternary, or Diluvian, when existing
species have been established. It is not till this latest period has
arrived that we can detect unmistakable evidences of man. There are,
however, many reasons which lead to the conclusion that his racial
roots go still further back in time. Did he arise as a “mutation,” one
of those rare sudden changes observed to take place even at the present
time, by which a species suddenly departs from its ancestral type and
is transformed? Let us briefly look at the main facts of mammalian
ascent. The great herbivorous reptiles--some do not seem to have
been strictly herbivorous--do not seem to lead us far on our path.
Widely spread throughout the world, the Theriomorphs or beast-shaped
reptiles seem to approach the mammal type, but they were too helpless
and unwieldy, and had little brain-power wherewith to direct their
energies. The earliest genuine mammals were small, not only relatively
to those great creatures, but really little, rat-like rodents. Then we
find arboreal creatures, driven to the trees for refuge and for food,
squirrel-like animals, agile to escape from their monstrous but clumsy
and stupid foes on the ground, and using their paws nimbly as hands to
grasp and tear, or to break nuts and other food.
Lemur-like animals (lemuroids) then come on the stage, and among
them--among the earliest of them--we begin to detect traces, on
feet and hands, of those patterned ridges, the beginnings of which
we have been seeking. Hand and brain and voice are the trinity of
social construction. The spider and the mantis (or praying insect)
have nimble, hand-like organs--very striking and conspicuous in the
mantis; the chameleon among reptiles, the parrot among birds, the
squirrel among lower mammals, all have somewhat hand-like organs used
in hand-like ways; but when we reach the higher mammals, the sense of
touch is finely intertwined with the power of varied and discriminative
grasping, pressing, or rubbing. The elephant, which appears at first
in the strata as about the size of a dog, grows in size and brain
power as the ages roll along. But his path seems now to be closing.
With his sagacious brain, and prehensile, sensitive trunk, he can do
wonders, but, like the horse, he is likely to be passed by; the great
tool-maker finding it easy now to make bearers swifter or more powerful
than they are.
It is in man and the anthropoid apes that we first find the
correspondence between hand and brain that promises mastery. The ugly,
painted mandrill, even, has beautiful lady-like hands and takes care of
them like a lady. All the higher apes show complicated finger-patterns
like those of man.
The rugæ in apes and men seem clearly to have served a most useful
purpose in aiding the firm grasp of hands or feet, a very vital
point in creatures living an arboreal life, as they and their racial
predecessors are now presumed to have done. In that case, however,
would not one pattern, a simple one, have done as well as any other?
Here, then, the great balancing principles of variation and heredity
come into operation. The variety of patterns is immense, and for aught
we know new ones may be being evolved at the present time. Here again,
heredity comes in, for there is certainly some tendency to repeat in a
quite general way the pattern of sire in the hands and feet of son. I
have as yet found no quite close correspondence of detail in any case
brought under my own notice. The question of identifying a person on
one or two lineations involves so many practical problems of obscurity
in printing and the like, that it is more appropriate for discussion in
another chapter.
In a work published last year on _Science and the Criminal_, by Mr. C.
Ainsworth Mitchell, after quoting a reference I made on one occasion to
the influence of heredity in _sometimes_ dominating finger-patterns,
the author goes on to say: “While there is questionably 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 full passage in
my paper in _Nature_ referred to, was this:--
“The dominancy of heredity through these infinite varieties is
sometimes very striking. I have found unique patterns in a parent
repeated with marvellous accuracy in his child. Negative results,
however, might prove nothing in regard to parentage, a caution
which it is important to make.”
The truth is, I have very frequently emphasized the fact that in such
similar patterns in sire and son there is no real danger of false
identification where several fingers are compared in their proper
serial order. It is not even likely that two such fingers would agree
exactly in lineations, number, curvature, etc., if carefully measured
in the way set forth in this work.
A more remarkable criticism is to be found in p. 63, thus: “The
existence of racial peculiarities in finger-prints, which Dr. Faulds
believed that he had discovered in the case of the Japanese, has not
been borne out by the experience of others.” The author then mentions
some observations on this point by Galton, who thought that “the width
of the ridges appeared to be more uniform and their direction more
parallel in the finger-prints of negroes than in those of other races.”
The word “negroes” here is delightfully vague in an ethnological
discussion. I have written nothing to justify the above remark. My
belief has long been that there is _no_ racial difference of yellow,
white, red, or black, to use the good old Egyptian classification,
but that the human family is one, and that view (right or wrong) was
enunciated often by me in Japan, both by speech and pen. Mr. Mitchell’s
strange misconception must surely be based on my words in the article
by me quoted above, where, after enumerating some elements in patterns
from different races, I go on distinctly to say: “These instances are
not intended to stand for typical patterns of the two peoples, but
simply as illustrations of the kind of facts to be observed.”
I had pleasure in giving my subscription and support to the recent
First Universal Races Congress, which has done much, I believe, to
consolidate scientific opinion as to the essential unity of our kind,
a belief not so old or universal as many think, dating, indeed, not
much more than a century back, if so far, as a scientific opinion, not
biassed by the slave interest.
Of much more importance now is the relation to human beings to the
great anthropoid stocks.
It is usual to separate the lemurs, which have strong affinities to
monkeys and to men, from the anthropoids, or man-like apes, forming two
great orders of
_Lemuroidea_, and
_Anthropoidea_.
In 1909, however, a paper was published by the Zoological Society
of London, in which this separation is considered to be no longer
justifiable, so that the lemurs and big man-like apes (orang,
chimpanzee, and gorilla) would no longer be held as separate orders
or sub-orders. There were some who hoped to show that the races of
men corresponded to three primitive anthropoid stocks, linked to the
three kinds of anthropoid apes. Whether the new view be correct or
not, and there is something to be said in its favour, there can be no
reasonable doubt now as to the close affinity which those creatures
have to ourselves and to one another.
When we first encounter remains of man or his close predecessor in the
records of the rocks, he was a dweller in holes and caves of the earth.
He certainly did not make pots of any kind, or at least he has left no
such remains. Probably he had no such companions even as the domestic
dog or cat, no cattle, not at first any kind of grain crop. He lived
on roots and fruits, hunted, and fished. Those early people have often
been called Troglodytes, from the Greek τρώγλη, a cave.
Professor Keith, the learned curator of the museum of the Royal College
of Surgeons, has advanced the theory that about the middle of the
Miocene Age a group of creatures existed, having affinities to man as
he now is, which group the professor names Proto-troglodytes. From
these sprung three classes of Troglodytes, namely:
The Gorilla;
The Chimpanzee;
Man.
Some eighty-seven anatomical features are said to be possessed by the
gorilla in common with man only, while the chimpanzee has ninety-eight
such features as belong to man. The gorilla has the best and biggest
teeth, and in this respect progressive deterioration went on through
the orang-utan and the chimpanzee to man. According to the estimate of
Professor Keith, there are not in the whole world, at present, more
than 100,000 chimpanzee, and some 10,000 gorillas.
The subject of twins is likely in future to be very interesting in
relation to the resemblance of their finger-patterns. The distinction
is now made of twins proceeding from one zygote or fertilized ovum,
and twins proceeding each from different fertilized ova. In the first
case, it is supposed that the twins are necessarily of the same sex,
while in the other, each twin child may be of the sex determined by the
fertilized ovum from which it sprung. Clearly, in the latter case it
might often happen that both twins might be male, or both female.
Dr. Berry Hart quotes from the records of another observer (Wilder) in
which there was a pair of “identical” twins, in whom the similarity was
complete even to the finger-prints. [_Brit. Med. Jour._, July 29th,
1911, p. 215.] I have found in the same family male and female with
_resembling_ finger-prints, but none which could be called identical,
but opportunities of comparing twins of the same sex do not often
occur. While writing this chapter I examined twins of the same sex
(female). Their finger-prints are very similar, but details diverge in
many directions. The matter merits close attention. But how are we to
determine that twins of the same sex are from one ovum, seeing that
there might be a coincidence of twins of the same sex proceeding from
separate ova? If their finger-prints are “identical,” is that the main
evidence? or do identity of features, colour of hair, voice, manners,
and character, come up independently? If one questions the theory, the
“identity” must be very complete indeed, to give it vraisemblance, for
how often do we not find that children of the same parents, not twins,
but born with many years intervening, show most striking resemblance?
The alleged complete identity of finger-patterns, however, is a most
interesting and novel point, and ought to receive close attention from
parents and physicians. A curious fact about hereditary resemblance
is this, which I have frequently observed. A child resembles, say,
a mother as a rule, but at some emotional, angry, or vexed moment,
lines are marked in the face by muscular movements which bring out
like a mask a striking likeness, say, of the father, or of some other
progenitor. Besides this, a child at different stages may resemble in
succession different near relatives, and in a very striking degree
resemble them. But with regard to finger-patterns there is no such
variability. Even a month or two before a child is born its little
heraldic crest begins to be firmly fixed for each finger, as it is to
be throughout life.
The disease called Acromegaly, or giant growth, involves great
expansion of the ridges and furrows, but no case of actual change
of patterns has been observed as yet. The attention of medical men
should be given to this affection in regard to modification of linear
arrangement.
The likeness or divergence of finger-patterns in neighbouring
supernumerary fingers and toes might yield interesting results if
carefully recorded. Extra fingers are commoner than extra toes. The
webbing of fingers, as in the chimpanzee, might also be noticed, and
any association with retrograde patterns, in the fingers concerned.
The rapid growth of a literature of Criminology is partly the result of
better methods of identification. It is unscientific to reason about
the personal peculiarities of all the Toms, Dicks, and Harrys, when Tom
may be Dick, or Dick Harry under a different alias. The criminologist
can now use his prison statistics as to age, habits, and the like,
with much greater confidence and precision. In an interesting, but
somewhat reckless work on “Criminal Man,” which summarizes the teaching
of the eminent Italian authority on the anatomy and psychology of the
criminal--of the Italian criminal at least--Cesare Lombroso, we are
told (p. 20): “Long fingers are common to swindlers, thieves, sexual
offenders, and pickpockets. The lines on the palmar surfaces of the
finger-tips are often of a simple nature, as in the anthropoids.” But
they are not, necessarily, of a simple nature in the anthropoids, but
often highly ornate and complex in their ramifications. In the lower
monkeys they are much simpler, and Sir F. Galton thought it was so
sometimes in the negro peoples. Indeed, one is not surprised to meet
such simple lineation patterns now and again in cultivated people,
without any criminal taint, or negro blood, or any anti-socialistic
tendencies that can be easily detected. A cautious prison doctor in
Glasgow, Dr. Devon, has written a clever book which gives much food
for sober reflection. He seems to say that the criminal is not a kind
of species by himself: “If those who come to prison for the first time
were made the subject of examination, it would be found that they are
principally remarkable for the absence of what the books call criminal
characteristics.” (p. 11.)