Court rejected the sworn story of an accident, and confirmed the facts of the registration, with the necessary consequence to the offender for his perjury. I do not know of any other repudiation having been pressed to this bitter end in India or elsewhere. The contrast between the inherent weakness of the old law and the efficiency of the new test could not be better exemplified. This case gave the first stern blow to the foul mischief that had developed such cruel proportions in India under cover of our conservative legal habits. The way the new safeguard was applied at Hooghly in 1877 was thus:--After the legal formalities of registration had been observed, the Registrar made the person print his two fingers on the deed, and again in a diary book which was kept by him in the office, for my own inspection rather than as evidence. It is, no doubt, preserved at Hooghly still. It was from this book that cuttings were made at my request in 1892 by Mr. Duke, the magistrate, which formed the subject of Sir Francis Galton's volume on 'Blurred Finger-prints' (1893), to which, for its cogency in marshalling the evidence, I must refer my readers. I annex a tracing of one of his enlargements, by permission of the London University, to which he left his great collection. [Illustration: Bechā Rām Dās Adhikāri. From tracings by Mr. Galton of enlargements, (_a_) Made in 1877 when registering his deed; (_b_) made in 1892 for Mr. Galton.] Another form in which I made use of the new system for public purposes was in the jail. The common device of hiring a substitute to serve out a term was not unknown, but it involved a long risk of detection. A safer but very costly, and therefore rare, device was sham death and a purchased corpse, affording comparative safety after escape. A case of this kind, carried out with the aid of an irregularly appointed doctor, was strongly suspected by me at Hooghly.[4] The precaution I adopted was to take the finger-prints of each offender when passing sentence of imprisonment, both on the records of the Court and also on the warrant to the jailer. [4] I had him dismissed soon after for a different offence.