45 

 view. At their request I agreed to receive a reporter and to give 

 him information. He was obviously greatly impressed by the 

 importance of the whole matter, and not only asked many ques- 

 tions but came back several times before he and I were satisfied 

 that he had the whole story correctly presented. 



He concluded by asking permission to have a photograph of 

 the fish. This I emphatically refused, to his consternation, and he 

 urged that the article would have much less value without a 

 photograph, which I countered by pointing out that it would at 

 least be world news from his pen. A good deal lay behind my 

 refusal. Once you decide an organism is new to science — and that 

 alone is a long story — it has to be named. A name alone is no use, 

 you must give sufficient descriptive detail so that the species can 

 always be recognised again, or else a good illustration, preferably 

 both. If two people happen to describe the same organism as new, 

 as often happens, the one whose name and account are published 

 first has 'priority', i.e. the organism for ever thereafter bears the 

 name he gave it followed by his name. Thus the Coelacanth is 

 Latimeria chalutnnae J. L. B. Smith. However, there is a type of 

 scientific piracy, in that if you are foolish enough to publish a 

 picture of some rarity that is unnamed, you take the risk of 

 someone else getting in before you with a name. Thus an un- 

 named picture of the Coelacanth in a newspaper could have led 

 to its being known for ever after something like Neoundina 

 moderna J. O. L. Roger. 



When my hand had been forced in the matter of immediate 

 publicity, I had privately determined for the reason given above 

 that as far as I was concerned, although the press could be given 

 the fullest details, there was to be no photograph for publication. 

 I wanted to do the thing properly, and intended that the first 

 picture of the Coelacanth should appear with a brief description 

 in some scientific journal — as it happened Nature of London. I 

 had previously ascertained from Miss Latimer that she had 

 definitely not permitted anyone to photograph the specimen, and 

 as far as she could determine no one had had the opportunity of 

 doing so without her knowledge. She pointed out it was unlikely 

 that anyone would have been prepared to take any risks in securing 

 photographs, since up to then no one had had any idea of the 

 fantastic nature of the creature. 



