ordinary care in execution, and with judicial care in the scrutiny, is, I can now say, for all practical purposes far more infallible than photography. It consists in taking a seal-like impression, in common seal ink, of the markings on the skin of the two forefingers of the right hand (these two being taken for convenience only).

I am able to say that these marks do not (bar accidents) change in the course of ten or fifteen years so much as to affect the utility of the test.

The process of taking the impression is hardly more difficult than that of making a fair stamp of an office seal. I have been trying it in the Jail and in the Registering Office and among pensioners here for some months past. I have purposely taken no particular pains in explaining the process, beyond once showing how it is done, and once or twice visiting the office, inspecting the signatures,[5] and asking the omlah[6] to be a little more careful. The articles necessary are such as the daftari[7] can prepare on a mere verbal explanation.

Every person who now registers a document at Hooghly has to sign his 'sign-manual'. None has offered the smallest objection, and I believe that the practice, if generally adopted, will put an end to all attempts at personation.

The cogency of the evidence is admitted by every one who takes the trouble to compare a few signatures together, and to try making a few himself. I have taken thousands now in the course of the last twenty years, and (bar smudges and accidents, which are rarely bad enough to be fatal) I am prepared to answer for the identity of every person whose 'sign-manual' I can now produce if I am confronted with him.

As an instance of the value of the thing, I might suggest that if Roger Tichborne had given his 'sign-manual' on entering the Army on any register, the whole Orton case would have been knocked on the head in ten minutes by requiring Orton to make his sign-manual alongside it for comparison.

I send this specimen to you because I believe that identification is by no means the unnecessary thing in jails which one might presume it should be. I don't think I need dilate on that point. Here is the means of verifying the identity of every man in jail with the man sentenced by the court, at any moment, day or night. Call the number up and make him sign. If it is he, it is he; if not, he is exposed on the spot. Is No. 1302 really dead, and is that his corpse or a sham one? The corpse has two fingers that will answer the question at once. Is this man brought into jail the real Simon Pure sentenced by the magistrate? The sign-manual on the back of the magistrate's warrant is there to testify, &c.

For uses in other departments and transactions, especially among illiterate people, it is available with such ease that I quite think its general use would be a substantial contribution towards public morality. Now that it is pretty well known here, I do not believe the man lives who would dare to attempt personation before the Registrar here. The mukhtears[8] all know the potency of the evidence too well.

Will you kindly give the matter a little patient attention, and then let me ask whether you would let me try it in other jails?

The impressions will, I doubt not, explain themselves to you without more words. I will say that perhaps in a small proportion of the cases that might come to question the study of the seals by an expert might be advisable, but that in most cases any man of judgement giving his attention to it cannot fail to pronounce right. I have never seen any two signatures about which I remained in doubt after sufficient care.

Kindly keep the specimens carefully.

Yours sincerely,

W. Herschel.

I received one answer, but its tenor was not so encouraging as I had hoped. I was out of heart, and did not press my request.

How much all this was regretted afterwards by others I must in simple justice record. It came about so quietly and so honourably that it is only now that I feel myself free to say publicly how deeply I was touched. My first substantive Commissionership had been given me by Sir George Campbell, to whose house I was not long after brought back in a dying condition from malarial fever. Sir George and his private secretary, Mr. Luttman Johnson, took us, my wife and myself, into the tenderest care. Years afterwards, in 1906, the latter befriended me in the kindliest manner at the annual I.C.S. garden-party, which I but rarely attended, and invited me to dine with him that evening. It was a party of seven or eight, and the next to arrive were Sir James and Lady Bourdillon. His name, when our host introduced us, I only recognized as lately Acting Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. To my great surprise, before our hands parted, he told me how often he had wished to meet me, to express his constant regret at having let my suggestion slip through his hands when he was Registrar-General. He remembered my letter well, and had indeed taken action by inquiry concerning my doings in his department, but for some reason he had lost sight of the matter. Needless to say, we became the firmest of friends on the spot, and I had the pleasure of a visit from him afterwards at Oxford. It is some years now since he and Mr. Luttman Johnson died. None of us, as far as I know, has ever spoken of this fine act of Sir James's except in strict privacy.

The Inspector of Jails of 1877, Mr. Beverley, afterwards a judge in the High Court of Bengal, is still alive. Writing in 1906, he says, regretfully, 'I have no recollection of writing the letter you refer to, but I know that, both as Registrar-General and as Inspector of Jails, I took great interest in the Finger-print system of identification, of which I always regarded you as the Apostle in India'. He too came to see me at Oxford after that, with one of his successors in the High Court.

I shall say more farther on in regard to my statement in this 1877 letter that 'these marks do not change in the course of ten or fifteen years'.

During my stay at Hooghly, so near Calcutta, I saw more society in my own house than in other stations, and interested my friends with the novelty of finger-printing. I give a few of their names to which special interest attaches.

Among Indian gentlemen, whose prints were taken at Hooghly in 1877, I do not know who are still living; I can only give the names of

(1) Bābu Dinonāth Pāl, of Hooghly;

(2) Bābu Lalit Mohun Singh, of Sibpur;

(3) Bābu Upendra Nārāyan Nandi, of Shāhāganj.

Of English friends still living I am allowed to reproduce the print of 1877, and its repeat in 1913, of Mr. Frank Courthope, well known in Sussex and in banking circles in London, (next page).

The next is remarkable. Captain V. H. Haggard, R.N., was a child of 2¾ years old at Hooghly, 1877. By much ingratiation I succeeded in getting a print of his whole hand, and another of three fingers. In 1913, when