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OCR Rendition - approximate
70 FINGER PRINTS CHAP. A fair idea of the way in which the patterns are distributed, is given by Plate 6. Eight persons were taken in the order in which they happened to present themselves, and Plate 6 shows the result. For greater clearness, colour has been employed to distinguish between the ridges that are supplied from the inner and outer sides of the hand respecttively. The words. right and left must be avoided in speaking of patterns, for the two hands are symmetrically disposed, only in a reversed sense. The right hand does not look like a left hand, but like the reflection of a left hand in a looking-glass, and vice versa. The phrases we shall employ will be the Inner and the Outer ; or thumb-side and little-finger side (terms which were unfortunately misplaced in my memoir in the Phil. Trans. 18 91). There need be no' difficulty in remembering the meaning of these terms, if we bear in mind that the great toes are undoubtedly innermost ; that if we walked on all fours as children do, and as our remote ancestors probably did, the thumbs also would be innermost, as is the case when the two hands are impressed side by side on paper. Inner and outer are better than thumb-side and little-finger side, because the latter cannot be applied to the thumbs and little fingers themselves. The anatomical words radial and ulnar referring to the two bones of the fore-arm, are not in popular use, and they might be similarly inappropriate, for it would sound oddly to speak of the radial side of the radius. The two plots just described will therefore be
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