_The Nemesis of Finger Prints._--An editorial in the New York Times of September 5th states that the evidence of guilty finger prints has hitherto been little used in criminal trials. No one has been convicted upon such evidence unsupported by other proof, although in a case of burglary a few months ago the corroborative testimony was supplied by the felon’s confession, made after he had compared the telltale whorls photographed upon the window pane of his victim’s house with his confirmatory digits. A grand jury has this week for the first time returned an indictment upon recorded prints on file at the central office of detectives which are reported to be identical with the faint impressions upon a dusty case found in a loft that had been looted by their stealthy maker. If he is convicted, Captain Faurot of the Police Department’s Bureau of Identification will have won a notable triumph. Men have been convicted of crimes upon the disputed testimony of handwriting experts. There has always remained some doubt that the chirography of others might be so like their variable hands as to be mistaken for it. There was the chance, too, that some malicious foe had carefully forged the damnatory documents. But the convolutions upon the tactile surfaces of hands and fingers cannot be forged, there is not one chance in a hundred millions that they will resemble the finger prints of another, and their identification with the guilty one is capable of mathematical proof. It would seem that no evidence could be more exact. As its nature becomes known to those who make up our juries, convictions upon such evidence will be common. * * * * * _Criminal Law and Criminology._--The American Association of Criminal Law and Criminology held its third annual meeting in Boston early in September. Governor Foss of Massachusetts in opening the conferences expressed himself as opposed to the long sentence and in favor of the indeterminate sentence and congenial labor for prisoners. “The medical world would rise up as a body to condemn any method of medical treatment which left the patient more liable to a recurrence of the disease than he was to its first attack. And yet everywhere men are being sent out of prison with the prison pallor on them, penniless, weakened in body by unwholesome conditions and broken in spirit by the withdrawal of all hope, ambition and self-confidence. “You are aware that in some places criminals are sent to jail with no guard, going freely on their honor; and that even when they reach the jail they find no prison wall, no armed guard waiting to shoot them down, but only a chance to test their own manhood again; a chance to live in a wholesome place, with sun and air, fair treatment and every incentive to regain their own self-respect.