Fingering
the art of arranging and managing the fingers on any musical instrument so as to produce the required notes in an easy and graceful manner. A good method of fingering is of the utmost importance to the student, as without it the easiest passages will often appear difficult, and the difficult ones almost impracticable.
FINGER PRINTS. The individual distinctiveness that attaches to the papillary ridges on the palms of the hand, their unchanging characteristic through life, and their broad variations as between one individual and another, are the traits that have led to their study and classification for purposes of personal identification. These characteristics apply especially to the patterns of the fingers, and the circumstance has resulted in much effort among men of science so to facilitate subdivision in cases where such identification is likely to be necessary as to make identification easily available. Up to the present the chief purpose to which the use of finger prints has been put to secure identification has been in the case of criminal classes, but there are not wanting those who see in it uses in many other directions, as in important legal documents where something more certain than mere signature is desirable, and in the army and navy during war. In wills and similar documents the use of the finger print would render forgery almost impossible, while it is an easily available substitute for a signature in the case of an illiterate. In the case of criminal identification, finger prints are now largely in use as a supplement to the Bertillon system, and the combination of the two systems leaves little FINLAND chance for error. Occasionally finger prints left on doors, windows, and polished surfaces in the course of the commission of a crime have led to the identification of the perpetrators, but success in these cases is not easily obtainable from the imperfect character of the imprints and the difficulty in adequately reproducing them. FINISTÈRE, the extreme W. department of France, formerly a part of the province of Brittany; surrounded on province three sides by the Atlantic and British Channel, and having E. the departments of Côtes-du-Nord and Morbihan; length, 65 miles; breadth about 55 miles; area, 2,595 square miles; pop. about 810,000.
The coasts are generally steep, rocky, and indented with many bays and harbors, some of which, as that of Brest, are of the first excellence. Numerous small islands skirt the coast. Surface, diversified, two chains of hills running through the department E. to W. Soil, various. Climate, humid, and subject to tempests and fogs. Agriculture is in a backward state, though oats, rye, wheat, barley, flax, and potatoes are largely raised. Past Pasturage is excellent , rearing large numbers of cattle. The fisheries yield a good return. The mines of lead at Poullaouen and Huelgoet are the most productive in France. Manufactures, sail-cloth, linen, ropes, leather, oil, tobacco, etc. Chief towns, Quimper (the capital), Brest, and Morlaix.