| ||||||
OCR Rendition - approximate
I INTRODUCTION 17 of a better term), have been tabulated and discussed. A batch of twins have also been analysed. Then cases have been treated in which both parents had the same pattern on corresponding fingers ; this pattern was compared with the pattern on the corresponding finger of the child. In these and other ways, results were obtained, all testifying to the conspicuous effect of heredity, and giving results that can be measured on the centesimal scale already described. But though the qualitative results are clear, the quantitative are as yet not well defined, and that part of the inquiry must lie over until a future time, when I shall have more data and when certain foreseen improvements in the method of work may perhaps be carried out. There is a decided appearance, first observed by Mr. F.- Howard Collins, of whom I shall again have to speak, of the influence of the mother being stronger than that of the father, in transmitting these patterns. In the twelfth chapter we come to a branch of the subject of which I had great expectations, that have been falsified, namely, their use in indicating Race and Temperament. I thought that any hereditary peculiarities would almost of necessity vary in different races, and that so fundamental and enduring a feature as the finger markings must in some way be correlated with temperament. The races I have chiefly examined are English, most of whom were of the upper and middle classes ; the others chiefly from London board schools ; Welsh, from the purest Welsh-speaking districts of South
|