I INTRODUCTION 19
idiots in the London district (who are all sent to Darenth Asylum), but I do not, still as a first approximation, find any decided difference between their finger prints. The ridges of artists are certainly not more delicate and close than those of men of quite another stamp.
In Chapter XIII. the question is discussed and answered affirmatively, of the right of the nine fundamentally differing patterns to be considered as different genera; also of their more characteristic varieties to rank as different genera, or species, as the case may be. The chief test applied, respected the frequency with which the various Loops that occurred on the thumbs, were found to differ, in successive degrees of . difference, from the central form of all of them; it was found to - accord with the requirements of the well-known law of Frequency of Error, proving the existence of a central type, from which the departures were, in common phraseology, accidental. Now all the evidence in the last chapter concurs in showing that no sensible amount of correlation exists between any of the patterns on the one hand, and any of the bodily faculties or characteristics on the other. It would be absurd therefore to assert that in the struggle for existence, a person with, say, a loop on his right middle finger has a better chance of survival, or a better chance of early marriage, than one with an arch. Consequently genera and species are here seen to be formed without the slightest aid from either Natural or Sexual Selection, and these finger
