INCREASING TWINS

Taranaki Daily News, 12 June 1928, Page 15

INCREASING TWINS

SCIENCE TO MAKE DISCOVERIES. What mysterious bond links together the mind, or minds, of identical twins? Not all twins are identical. Some children, although born at the same time, are markedly .afferent in physical and mental characteristics. Professor Horatio Hackett Newman, a biologist, has been studying 100 sets of identical twins. Identical twins, Jiis lasiJtireh has established, are always of the same sex. Triplets are never identical. Two of the children may bo duplicates, and the third merely a fraternal type, as the cell does not mature when divided into more than two parts, according to accepted scientific belief. Among the identical twins examined by Professor Newman are two Londonborn girls, now living in Canada, who provided some of his most hclnful material. “Some of the twins we studied inakr a positive effort,” Professor Newman reports, “to bo different from carli other. This is true even of Identical twins, but, in the case of girls, the varying of the style of dress, hair, and tyre of cosmetics used by each makes it quite easy for them to <■-—-nr 'different.’ “When we gave mental tests to identical twins, while they were separated from each other, we found that in -e cases they do not score as well as when they take the test together, although they give each -other no material aid whatever. It would almost suggest that so great is their similarity and sympathy that one is not quite complete without the other.” This seeming unity of mind has led to an interesting conjecture in law. Recently a lawyer, defending a youth charged with murder, sought the advice of Dr. Newman on the psychology of twins in an attempt to build up a defence for his client. The twin sister of the murderer’ was proved to be of the highest mental type, of splendid moral character, whereas her brother, a weak ment'l type, admitted a pathological crime. Dr. Newman declared that no bond existed between the twins, other than that which links any brother and sister, and the scientific arguments regarding the mental inake-u of twins could not be introduced because the difference in sex stamped the twins to be mere fraternal types, not identical. Were this modern criminological concept carried to n hypothetical conclusion, not at all beyond the realm of plausibility, the question might arise reoerding mentc’ identity in the event of one of the so-ealled Siamese twins being tried for the commission of a. crime. ’ In . all the “Siamese” twins which have come under scientific observation, a perfect unity of physical as well as mental make-up seems to exist. The talented- Hilton sisters, joined since birth, have identical interests in music as well as absolute similarity in physical characteristics. The question was first raised in a discussion of Eng ami Chang, iho ari»!nal Siame- twins. “Here are, in effect, two different persons residing in one body, and t would bo impossible to punish the one without punishing the other,” a scientist declared. “Had Chang cominitted a deliberate murder, punishable with capital punishment, the sentence could not. have been carried out, as the execution of Chang would have Involved the dentil of Eng.”

Identical twins, instead of being exact counter-parts of each other, are often what Dr. Newman refers to as “mirror-images” of each other. The left hand of one Corresponds to the right hand of the other, or vice versa. Sir Francis Galton, the En'.’lisli scientist, who has made the most extensive study of finger-prints, estimated that the chances are 64,0011,000,000 to one against two finger-prints being exactly alike, and even precluded the possibility of the finger-prints of identical tvrins being the same. This Dr. Newman confirms in part. The whorl pattern, for instance, of the index finger of the left hand will giv i a seeinh "ly different impression from tlio same finger of the twin, but according to the study of mirror imaging II would Be virtually the same as the pattern nf the index finger of the right hand of the other tw.in. It was this difference which con fused Bertillon experts a few years ago when they attempted to study the finger-prints of the twin bioth.ers Charles and Edward Terry. More twins are now being Iwrn, and Biologists, studying the cases for multiple births, believe that in a few hundred years twin births will be more common.