46 



This reporter was certainly persistent, and after finding me 

 unmoved carried his attack to Miss Latimer, whom he got to 

 consider the matter, and she suggested we might make some com- 

 promise. It was only with very considerable reluctance that I 

 agreed that he might take photographs, but on the express con- 

 dition that they were to be published only in the East London 

 Daily Dispatch and nowhere else. I insisted on this undertaking, 

 and it was given by this man in the presence of Miss Latimer, my 

 wife, and myself. On that, the specimen was carried outside and 

 he was permitted to take several exposures. I asked him to show 

 me all the negatives, but as it happened I never saw any, so did 

 not know what good ones he had. 



Two of the pictures, and they were excellent, duly appeared in 

 the Daily Dispatch on the 20th February 1939, rightly labelled as 

 the only ones in the world. 



Some days after we had returned to Grahamstown I had a 

 telephone call from a Durban newspaper, when it was mentioned 

 that they had been offered a photograph of the Coelacanth by a 

 person in East London. Considerably perturbed, I promptly wrote 

 to inform Miss Latimer. 



The next surprise was a telephone call from a friend in England 

 to say that I was taking an awful risk in permitting any photo- 

 graphs of the animal to appear unnamed. I heard that they had 

 been sent to various newspapers over there, most of whom had 

 just ignored them, thinking it was a hoax. There came also a 

 cable from London urging me to attach a name to the Coelacanth. 

 As has been indicated I had long since intended to apply the 

 name Latimeria chalumnae^ which I now attached to the fish. 

 Although greatly disturbed by all that had happened over the 

 photographs, I was so desperately occupied at that time that I 

 did not manage to find time to investigate how it had all come 

 about. 



Some years later I read in some paper that this particular 

 journalist had been greatly admired for his clever 'scoop' in 

 getting the pictures of the first Coelacanth so promptly, that he 

 had made a good deal of money, and was indeed still drawing 

 royalties from them. To improve things a bit, it went on to tell 

 how he had had the foresight to photograph the Coelacanth 

 when it was on the quay ! 



