copies for use in my inquiries by the kind permission of Sir Edmund
Du Cane, H.M. Director of Prisons. The originals of these and their
components have frequently been exhibited. It is unhappily a fact
that fairly distinct types of criminals breeding true to their kind
have become established, and are one of the saddest disfigurements
of modern civilisation. To this subject I shall recur.

I have made numerous composites of various groups of convicts, which
are interesting negatively rather than positively. They produce
faces of a mean description, with no villainy written on them. The
individual faces are villainous enough, but they are villainous in
different ways, and when they are combined, the individual
peculiarities disappear, and the common humanity of a low type is all
that is left.

The remaining portraits are illustrations of the application of the
process to the study of the physiognomy of disease. They were
published a year ago with many others, together with several of
the portraits from which they were derived, in a joint memoir by
Dr. Mahomed and myself, in vol. xxv. of the _Guy's Hospital Reports_.
The originals and all the components have been exhibited on several
occasions.

In the lower division of the Plate will be found three composites,
each made from a large number of faces, unselected, except on the
ground of the disease under which they were suffering. When only few
portraits are used, there must be some moderate resemblance between
them, or the result would be blurred; but here, dealing with as many
as 56, 100, and 50 cases respectively, the combination of any medley
group results in an ideal expression.