be thrown up to a hundred times
its normal size for the purpose of minute study. This has often proved
useful in detecting forgeries as well as aiding the work of the
Finger-print Department.

I have said that the primary purpose of the department is not the
detection of crime. Nevertheless, it has played no small part in the
solution of mysteries where other clues have failed. There was the case
of the Stratton brothers, for instance, where the print on a cash-box
led to arrest, although other evidence aided the conviction.

Perhaps the most interesting case is that which first focussed the
public attention on the value of the system. It occurred in 1898,
shortly after the present Commissioner initiated the system in India. He
himself tells the story.

The manager of a tea-garden was found murdered, and a safe and
despatch-box robbed of several hundred rupees. Suspicion was at first
divided among the coolies and cook, the relatives of a woman with whom
the dead man had carried on an intrigue, a wandering gang of Kabulis,
and an ex-servant whom he had prosecuted for theft--a wide enough field,
in all conscience.

But the police were unexpectedly helped in their investigation by the
discovery in the despatch-box of a small light-blue book, a calendar in
Bengali characters. On the cover were two indistinct smudges. Under a
magnifying-glass these proved to be the impressions of a blood-stained
finger.

Search was made in the records of the Bengal police, and it was found
that the finger-print was that of the right thumb of the ex-servant.

He was arrested some hundreds of miles away, and charged with murder and
robbery. On the ground that it would be unsafe to convict him of murder,
as no one saw him do it, he was acquitted on that charge, but was
convicted of theft.

It would be possible to write largely on cases where finger-prints have
afforded culminating proof of a person's guilt. One that has a grim
touch of humour may be recalled.

A constable pacing his beat in Clerkenwell noticed a human finger on one
of the spikes of the gate of a warehouse. Closer investigation showed
that the place had been broken into, and that the marauder had been
disturbed and taken to flight in panic. In scaling the gates he had
caught the little finger of his right hand on the spikes, and it had
been torn away.

It was sent to the Finger-print Department and identified as that of a
man well-known to the police, and the word w