CHAPTER II
PREVIOUS USE OF FINGER PRINTS
THE employment of impressions of the hand or fingers to serve as sign -manuals will probably be found in every nation of importance, but the significance attached to them differs. It ranges from a mere superstition that personal contact is important, up to the conviction of which this book will furnish assurance, that when they are properly made, they are incomparably the most sure and unchanging of all forms of signature. The existence of the superstitious basis is easily noted in children and the uneducated; it occupies a prominent place in the witchcrafts of barbarians. The modern witness who swears on the Bible, is made to hold it and afterwards to kiss it ; he who signs a document, touches a seal or wafer, and declares that " this - is my act and deed." Students of the primitive customs of mankind find abundant, instances of the belief, that personal contact communicates some mysterious essence from the thing touched to the person who touches it, and vice versa; but it is unnecessary here to enter further into these elementary human reasonings,
