CHAPTER VI
PERSISTENCE
THE evidence that the minutiae persist throughout life is derived from the scrutiny and comparison of various duplicate impressions, one of each pair having been made many years ago, the other recently. Those which I have studied more or less exhaustively are derived from the digits of fifteen different persons. In some cases repeated impressions of one finger only were available ; in most cases of two fingers ; in some of an entire hand. Altogether the whole or part of repeated impressions of between twenty and thirty different digits have been studied. I am indebted to Sir W. J. Herschel for almost all these valuable data, without which it would have been impossible to carry on the inquiry. The only other prints are those of Sir W. G , who, from curiosity, took impressions of his own fingers in sealing-wax in 1874, and fortunately happened to preserve them. He was good enough to make others for me last year, from which photographic prints were made. The following table gives an analysis of the above data. It would be well worth while to hunt up and take the present finger prints
