And putting it on the rail he opened it with the key. There was half a brick in it. _Detectives at School._ M. BERTILLON'S NEW METHOD OF DESCRIPTIVE PORTRAITS. BY ALDER ANDERSON. [Illustration: DETECTIVES RECEIVING A LECTURE ON THE METHOD OF IDENTIFICATION BY NOSES. _From a Photo._] The painter and the writer, the world has been assured repeatedly by the very highest authorities, can never encroach very far on each other's domains. Whereas a picture conveys the same idea to every beholder, so far at least as the outward aspect of the personages represented is concerned, a mere description can only give such vague and hazy outlines that the ideas of no two readers need ever be identical. How is it that no critic has ever suggested that this apparent inferiority of literature might, perhaps, simply be lack of science on the part of the author? Such, however, would appear to be the logical deduction to be drawn from the innovation which M. Bertillon, after ten years' persistent efforts, has recently succeeded in getting officially adopted by the Paris Detective Police. M. Bertillon has proved that the appearance of any individual may be expressed in terms so clear, precise, and unequivocal that identically the same image is evoked in the mind of everybody who hears or reads the description. With nothing else but such a description to guide him in his search, anybody of normal intelligence is able, after a few lessons from the inventor of the system, to unerringly pick out the person indicated from a crowd, however great, and in an incredibly short time. The new method materially adds to the efficacy of the anthropometrical system of identification, with which the name of Bertillon, the inventor of the "thumb-prints" method, is inseparably connected. A brief outline of that system may here be given. The variety of Nature is infinite; she never repeats herself. No two leaves are ever precisely alike, much less two human beings. A superficial observer may fancy that two individuals resemble each other in a remarkable manner. Let him examine them more attentively; he will find that they differ radically in almost every detail. The farther he carries his examination the more numerous and the more conspicuous will the differences appear, until at last he may almost experience a difficulty in discovering any trace of the resemblance that before seemed so striking. This is a _résumé_ of some of the principal axioms at the base of M. Bertillon's teaching. Every person, then, who for one reason or another comes within the power of the law in France and in some other countries is photographed and measured in prevision of his transgressing on some future occasion. [Illustration: THESE ARE THE PORTRAITS OF A CRIMINAL, TAKEN IN PROFILE AND FULL FACE.] [Illustration: THIS IS THE SAME CRIMINAL, WHO WAS IDENTIFIED BY A DETECTIVE AND ARRESTED ON THE EVIDENCE OF HIS EARS.]