74 



most part of that area were included in my South African fishes 

 volume, printing of which had started in March 1948, and we 

 completed our work early in 1949, the book itself eventually 

 appearing in July that year. 



By that time the public of South Africa had become interested 

 in our work, and our basic support from the C.S.I.R. was supple- 

 mented by gifts of supplies and money from private persons and 

 firms. 



From then on we carried out a series of expeditions, going 

 steadily farther afield each year. Always we carried and distributed 

 the leaflets, spoke of the Coelacanth, and asked questions. In 

 1948 I met a native in the Bazaruto area of Mozambique who 

 picked on the fish at once. Yes, he had once caught exactly such a 

 queer fish, he got it one evening in the deep channel south of 

 Bazaruto Island, but had never seen or heard of another before or 

 since. In the water it was like a big Garrupa (Rock Cod), but when 

 he got it out the big scales and the peculiar fins stamped it on his 

 memory as unique. He spoke of its oiliness, the soft flesh, and the 

 absence of bone, things about which he could never have known 

 except from an actual specimen. He could not say if the tail was 

 the same, but it was near enough. This was the only reasonably 

 hopeful sign we got in all that long search up the east coast of 

 Africa. It remained the only one. 



Before the book on South African fishes appeared, the publishers 

 told me they expected it to sell well, and that it would probably 

 be necessary to have a second edition within a year. The volume 

 was issued in July 1949, six weeks before we were due to go on an 

 expedition to East Africa. The whole edition sold out in three 

 weeks! It was a situation! We were in the throes of our final 

 arrangements for departure when we received a frantic call from 

 the publishers to prepare for another edition. I do not yet know 

 how it was done, but it was. The proofs followed us in batches over 

 a long stretch of Mozambique, and were corrected under what one 

 may term somewhat unusual conditions and in places where such 

 work had certainly never been done before. A book of that type 

 takes almost a year to print, and that second edition came out the 

 following year. 



Meanwhile we went steadily on, gradually extending our know- 

 ledge of East Africa, its reefs, conditions, and fishes, and contin- 



