33 

 that it was only a sketch and clearly impressionistic, and so might 

 be misleading. At the same time, it pointed directly to those 

 Crossopterygian fishes of long ago. My peculiar photographic 

 memory had recorded that the fossil Crossopterygii were de- 

 scribed in Volume II of the Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes of the 

 British Museum, published in 1891, but I had no such literature 

 at Knysna, nor were any available there. Such works were at 

 Grahamstown and Cape Town. 



In the early days of my work on fishes, my collections were 

 naturally incomplete, and as the largest were at the South African 

 Museum at Cape Town, I had gone there several times to examine 

 this material, and all too frequently this led me to question Barn- 

 ard's* printed opinions. These tilts, whether refuted or established, 

 he took with equal patience and good humour, and I had con- 

 tinual correspondence with him. I knew, therefore, at Knysna, 

 that in time, as measured by the post. Cape Town was nearer 

 than Grahamstown. On the 4th January I therefore telegraphed 

 Barnard asking him to post me immediately that volume dealing 

 with the Crossopterygii, which he did, as always, promptly, that 

 being his way, and this arrived at Knysna on the 6th January 1939. 



Miss Latimer's sketch and notes with that book left little doubt 

 in my mind that if this fish of hers was not a Coelacanth, it was 

 very like one. What a fantastic thing ! Just imagine : a Coelacanth, 

 still living, and all the greatest authorities of the world would be 

 prepared to swear that all Coelacanth fishes had died out about 

 50 million years ago (it is estimated at 70 million today). Here was 

 I in remote South Africa with the audacity to be convinced in my 

 mind that this was a Coelacanthid fish. Even though I had done 

 only spare-time work on fishes for less than ten years, I knew a 

 good deal about them by then, and the careful and detailed papers 

 I had published were known to scientists who worked on fishes 

 all over the world; but I was still only on the way up. 



Those were awful days, and the nights were even worse. I was 

 tortured by doubts and fears. What was the use of that infernal 

 premonition of mine if it was just going to lead me to make a 

 scientific fool of myself? Fifty million years ! It was preposterous 

 that Coelacanths had been alive all that time, unknown to modern 

 man. If that was a Coelacanth and it had been alive, then there 



* Dr. K. H. Barnard (see p. 8). 



