The witness explained that he had received a Scotland Yard education in regard to this system, which is the greatest dread of the practised criminal.
At present there are about 15,000 hand records in the possession of the police at Wellington.
They include the finger prints of persons recently convicted of serious offences in New Zealand and Australia.
On the Miramar burglary being reported, it was found that particularly good prints were left on the door of the safe which had been blown open.
Photographs were taken of them, and the names of 32 suspected persons were handed to him by the detectives.
After seven or eight comparisons he found a counterpart in the record of Robert Stockbridge, but he examined 40 or 50 before he had any suspicion raised concerning the brother William, whose record was under the alias of James Devonport.
In his case there were 20 points of similarity.
Under the system of classification adopted, all similar patterns are put together, but no two have ever been found to be exactly alike.
Any similarity, the witness mentioned, is limited to one or two points.
• A question which is exciting more interest in the United States than the war has arisen over the action of Dr Harry Haiselden, who, finding a defective and abnormal child borne by a Chicago woman, decided to allow it die rather than to perform an operation which was certain to save its life, but which would never make it normal or unparalysed.
The mother approved of his action.
The medical profession has agreed that the only possible course was followed.
The coroner justified Dr Haiselden on the ground that it was impossible for the child ever to become normal.
The churches' opinions are divided.
• The Otago Art Society's annual exhibition continues to draw admiring visitors to the Art Gallery, and many find pleasure in returning again and again. Several valuable pictures found purchasers yesterday, the following sales being effected: ''A Centenarian, Kapi Kapi Au Kawa, Chieftainess, aged 102 years,'' by C. F. Goldie (£13.13s); ''No Koora te Cigaretti'', by C. F. Goldie (£13.13s); and ''Mending Nets, Lago Maggiore, Italy'', by C. N. Worsley (£21).
• Most of the tree planting work at Rotorua now is under the control of the Prisons Department. With prison and free labour, something like 16,000 acres have been planted. There were varieties of eucalyptus, pinus insignis, Austrian and Corsican pines, and the Oregon Pine.
• One of the proprietors of a business not a thousand miles from Invercargill, being a single man and eager to volunteer for active service, advertised throughout the dominion for someone to take his place during his absence, the salary offered being something in the neighbourhood of £500 a year (says the Southland News).
The advertisement attracted nearly 500 applications, over 300 of them being sent in by unmarried men.
The advertiser's volunteering ardour was somewhat damped by the knowledge that, while he was prepared to risk the smashing up of his business in order to fight for his country, some hundreds of men were equally prepared to jump into his job.
He had decided to wait a while before again advertising. - ODT, 20.11.1915.
• COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ
