by wrinkles which were not there in youth, the two prints are from the same individual. Other observers--Sir Francis Galton, Sir William Herschel, and the police of this and other countries--have accumulated a vast store of conclusive evidence on this point. We are now amply justified in assuming that, for all practical purposes of identification, the patterns on human fingers are, throughout life, persistent and unchangeable. Such slight and transient changes--not due to mere variations of pressure, inking, and the like, as they usually are--are no more likely to invalidate an identification than a new freckle or pimple on a man’s face would make him unrecognizable by his intimate friends. Dr. J. G. Garson, in an article in the _Daily Express_ of July 20th, 1905, writing on this subject, which he has carefully studied, said:-- “It is now a well ascertained fact that every person bears on his fingers as certain proof of his identity as he does on his face. The latter is, however, that part of his anatomy by which he is most readily identified by the world at large, though to his intimate friends other particulars about him may characterise him equally strongly. By means of the eye, the _tout ensemble_ of the countenance is registered upon the mind, generally regardless of details respecting the actual form of each particular feature--in short, a person is recognized and identified by exactly the same psychological process as a printed or written word is read without first spelling it.” It must be clear to any student of the subject that _persistence of patterns_ must become the basis of identification in this way, and that persistence is now as firmly established as anything can be as to living creatures. Sir Edward Henry, in his _Finger-Prints_, says (p. 17, 3rd edition): “Impressions being required for permanent record, their utility must, in great measure, be contingent upon the persistence through long periods of time, of the general form of the pattern and of the details of the ridges constituting it.” No such stability has yet been shown to exist in regard to any other part of the body. The bones change very greatly, not only in size, but in shape, texture, and mechanical conditions through life. Even the ordinary features and expression of a human being by no means can be said to remain uniform. One sees a friend during many short intervals, and is not finely observant of minute changes that in a decade or two amount collectively to an almost complete transformation of the man’s whole face and figure. The photographic system of identification, although serving a purpose now and then, was found, therefore, to be untrustworthy.