Abstract
M.ALPHONSE BERTILLON, who has so completely demonstrated the futility of the photograph as a means of judicial identification on any extended scale (see my description of M. Bertillon's system of police anthropometry in the Fortnightly Review for March last), when a mere mass of photographs is accumulated with no scientific scheme to aid them, has himself, nevertheless, done more than anyone else to develop and demonstrate the proper subordinate use of the photograph as an agent of the law. M. Bertillon's studies on the subject are not only most valuable to the members of the public administration, but are intensely interesting and instructive to the general reader, and the general scientific student especially, as will be readily acknowledged on a perusal of the young French official's latest publication.2 He has not only offered me the privilege of making such extracts as I please from this work, but has kindly furnished me with some of the diagrams in the text. This new volume has already attracted considerable attention in France, and will doubtless be received with as much interest in England as have M. Bertillon's previous studies in the domain of anthropology, so that an account of the work in the columns of NATURE seems most opportune.
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References
Further information as to customs and legends of the Torres Straits Islanders will be found in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xix. 1890, and in Folk-Lore, vol. i. 1890.
"La Photographie Judiciaire, avec un appendice sur la classification et l'identification anthropométriques." Par Alphonse Bertillon, Chef du Service d'Identification de la Préfecture de Police. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1890.)
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SPEARMAN, E. French Police Photography. Nature 42, 642–644 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/042642a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/042642a0