50 



The publicity surrounding the whole discovery led many 

 people to write, telephone, or call about the oddest things. One 

 woman wrote to say that she had seen in the papers that I was 

 interested in old things. She had a violin that had been in the 

 family for over a hundred years, if she sent it would I tell her if 

 it was valuable.^ Others had sailors' fish-monstrosity fakes, rare 

 and valuable shells and other ancient curios, while one' man 

 offered me a share in a project to hunt for treasure in the middle of 

 Durban, to be based on an ancient supposed pirate's map of 

 buried loot. Many rare and presumably prehistoric creatures were 

 reported at that time, mainly fishes. In our most difficult period 

 I was wakened near midnight by an excited call from Knysna to tell 

 of a wonderful creature one of the deep-sea fishermen had got — 

 it had a face like a monkey, short legs, and an eye in the top of its 

 head. Would I come at once and see it; yes, right away. I asked 

 a few questions and suggested it was a 'Jakob', a curious shark- 

 like creature, but not exactly rare. I did not go and later when the 

 fish came, it was what I had suspected. 



It was in this period that odd reports came to attach the term 

 *Missing Link' to the Coelacanth, a label that especially later 

 was to prove exceedingly troublesome. There were letters from 

 apparently ultra-religious people who roundly reproved me for 

 ignoring the Bible in my preposterous statements about millions 

 of years, and did I not know that the theory of evolution was evil 

 and an anti-religious invention of the devil put into some men's 

 minds to enable them to divert others from the path of true 

 thought ? These came from a wide area of the globe. 



Meanwhile, for the eager world of science I was faced with the 

 task of preparing a detailed description of what remained of the 

 animal, and, of course, ample and accurate illustration was essen- 

 tial. I bore a heavy teaching and administrative burden in the 

 Chemistry Department, which gave me hardly any free time 

 during official hours. In view of the world-wide interest in my 

 researches on this creature, I could well have done with some 

 relief to expedite that work, but perhaps foolish pride kept me 

 from asking, and as none was offered I somewhat grimly kept my 

 teaching at normal intensity. Visiting scientists, and others by 

 letter, expressed their astonishment at this situation. I gave no 

 response, but it really was a trying ordeal. Each day I rose at 3 



