Forensic databases

Yes

They have soil analyst's in the bomb investigation unit. They take sample after Beirut etc and share with CSIS and MI6

Depending on the location....I don't think you would find blood after the weather has been at it for centuries.

Oh OK. I believe the FBI started taking samples during the manhattan project when they wanted to see how far the dust travelled. But it also seems to me they had some form of analyst during the lindburgh baby kidnapping. I guess you could make up a forensic history.

Tiaga said:

I believe the FBI started taking samples during the manhattan project when they wanted to see how far the dust travelled. But it also seems to me they had some form of analyst during the lindburgh baby kidnapping. I guess you could make up a forensic history.

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Sherlock Holmes stories have Holmes identifying types of soil as coming from various different parts of London. I know that's not real, and Holmes used his senses rather than microscopes, but it's worth noting that the idea for this was definitely in the air 100-120 years ago. So your idea's a good one: it's not implausible to make up a forensic history of soil analysis that long ago. The necessary technology isn't recent, it's basically microscopes and chemistry--such analysis could probably have been done back than, though it would've taken longer and been less precise.

So you could plausibly have a story in which a catalog of soil types that old existed. To seem realistic, the catalog would almost certainly be black-ink drawings done by hand; it was a while before photography had reached the point where you could take a photo through a microscope. So it would be drawings depicting the shape, arrangement, etc. of the soil type as seen through a microscope, along with written descriptions specifying other details (e.g. size of sand crystals in this particular type of sand, any common color variations, etc.). I would think it would look kind of like those 19th-century botanical drawings (it could be in color or just ink, but the overall style would be like those). And it might be stored in a drawer along with little glass vials of each soil type, with each vial having a hand-lettered (calligraphy style, 19th-century lettering) label. Picture the storage cases in old museums--huge, dark wooden cabinets with tons of drawers and some glass-fronted cabinets on top for larger items.