9 8 FINGER PRINTS
CHAP.
ten digits, in addition to more than 100 on the ball of the thumb, which has not one-fifth of the superficies of the rest of the palmar surface. The total number of points suitable for comparison on the two hands must therefore be not less than one thousand and nearer to two ; an estimate which I verified by a rough count on my own hand ; similarly in respect to the feet. The dimensions of the limbs and body alter in the course of growth and decay ; the colour, quantity, and quality of -the hair, the tint and quality of the skin, the number and set of the teeth, the expression of the features, the gestures, the handwriting, even the eye-colour, change after many years. There seems no persistence in the visible parts of the body, except in these minute and hitherto too much disregarded ridges.
It must be emphasised that it is in the minutiae, and not in the measured dimensions of any portion of the pattern, that this remarkable persistence is observed, not even if the measurements be made in units of a ridge-interval. The pattern grows simultaneously with the finger, and its proportions vary with its fatness, leanness, usage, gouty deformation, or age. But, though the pattern as a whole may become considerably altered in length or breadth, the number of ridges, their embranchments, and other minutiae remain unchanged. So it is with the pattern on a piece of lace. The piece as a whole may be stretched in this way, or shrunk in that, and its outline altogether altered ; nevertheless every one of the component threads, and every knot in every
