53 

 ledgments the exponents of different schools of thought would 

 each urge me to use the particular nomenclature they favoured for 

 the numerous bones of the head. I allied myself with none, and 

 gave the bones numbers that meant more to me than possible 

 significant names. 



Various curious things happened. I received a letter from the 

 Curator of a museum in Australia, who was shown some scales of 

 the Coelacanth by an Australian. We attemped to discover how he 

 got them, but that mystery was never solved. Some others got 

 into the possession of a scientist in Johannesburg, but we did not 

 solve that either, for as far as could be determined from the time 

 Miss Latimer took possession of the specimen, no unauthorised 

 person was permitted to touch it or even to approach it near enough 

 to grab a few 'souvenirs'. I had given a special warning about that 

 souvenir danger. One 'explanation' of possession of the scales was 

 that they had been collected on the wharf at East London after 

 Miss Latimer had gone off with the fish. This is scarcely plausible, 

 for nobody then had any idea of the importance of the fish, and 

 anyone picking up scales on the fish wharf at East London would 

 indeed be a phenomenon. 



Meanwhile the full backwash of the effect of the discovery over- 

 seas had come back to the Union. One was an enormous picture 

 of the Coelacanth, together with an article by Dr. E. L White of 

 the British Museum, in the London Illustrated News, I did not 

 find it flattering to remote scientists like myself, and it expressed 

 the view that the Coelacanth had come from the deeper parts of the 

 sea. (See Chapter Six, p. 59.) Coupled with this at the same time 

 was a letter to me protesting against the proposed use of the 

 name Latimeria for this historic find, and referring to Miss Lati- 

 mer in terms that were scathing, to say the least. 



I must confess to an angry reaction to this letter and replied 

 expressing the strongest disapproval of such sentiments and 

 remarks, and also published the following in regard to this 

 criticism in Nature (6 May 1939): 



Few persons outside South Africa have any knowledge of our 

 conditions. In the coastal belt only the South African Museum at 

 Cape Town has a staff of scientific workers among whom is an 

 ichthyologist. The other six small museums serving the coastal 

 area are in extremely poor circumstances, and generally have only a 



