Leaving Purkenje to be spoken of in a later chapter, because he deals chiefly with classification, the first well-known person who appears to have studied the lineations of the ridges as a means of identification, was Bewick, who made an impression of his own thumb on a block of wood and engraved it, as well as an impression of a finger. They were used as fanciful designs for his illustrated books. Occasional instances of careful study may also be noted, such as that of Mr. Fauld (_Nature_, xxii. p. 605, Oct. 28, 1880), who seems to have taken much pains, and that of Mr. Tabor, the eminent photographer of San Francisco, who, noticing the lineations of a print that he had accidentally made with his own inked finger upon a blotting-paper, experimented further, and finally proposed the method of finger prints for the registration of Chinese, whose identification has always been a difficulty, and was giving a great deal of trouble at that particular time; but his proposal dropped through. Again Mr. Gilbert Thompson, an American geologist, when on Government duty in 1882 in the wild parts of New Mexico, paid the members of his party by order of the camp sutler. To guard against forgery he signed his name across the impression made by his finger upon the order, after first pressing it on his office pad. He was good enough to send me the duplicate of one of these cheques made out in favour of a man who bore the ominous name of "Lying Bob" (Plate 1, Fig. 2). The impression took the place of the scroll work on an ordinary cheque; it was in violet aniline ink, and looked decidedly pretty. From time to time sporadic instances like these are met with, but none are comparable in importance to the regular and official employment made of finger prints by Sir William Herschel, during more than a quarter of a century in Bengal. I was exceedingly obliged to him for much valuable information when first commencing this study, and have been almost wholly indebted to his kindness for the materials used in this book for proving the persistence of the lineations throughout life.