!I2 



factor had been such a shock that only now did I notice that 

 Hunt's cable read 'inspected five kilos of formalin' (clearly a 

 misprint for 'injected'), about a gallon. That sounded better ! 

 But was it concentrated formalin ? It had been arranged for Hunt 

 to get a 'bottle' of formalin for that smaller fish, probably about 

 or less than a pint. This cable could mean that he had got about 

 a pint of concentrated formalin which, according to the directions 

 he had been given, would make about five kilos of dilute solution. 

 That was not enough, not nearly enough to preserve a fish as big 

 as that for more than a short time in such heat. If only he had 

 said 'concentrated' formalin ; but he hadn't and it was not certain 

 that he realised its significance. So that was still a very big doubt, 

 the fish might even now be going putrid ; in any case, because the 

 proper injection of a large fish is not anything a layman can nor- 

 mally do without instruction, especially in places as hot as the 

 Comores. And what in Heaven's name did the statement about the 

 front dorsal or tail remnant mean ? All my fears about its not being 

 a Coelacanth at all flared up again in full force. At top speed my 

 mind took me writhing again through all that sea of doubt, 

 though it did help to remember that the fossil record had shown 

 that the small extra tail in Coelacanths gradually became shorter 

 as time passed; in fact, it was apparently absent in some later 

 forms. That in Latimeria was about the shortest. Then in the 

 Lung-fishes, which had almost as long a fossil record as the 

 Coelacanths, the first dorsal fin of earlier forms had just dis- 

 appeared with time. It was therefore within the bounds of 

 possibility that over this past 70 million years such trends had 

 led to a modern type of Coelacanth without extra tail or first 

 dorsal. It was just possible, and beyond that I clung to our faith 

 in Hunt, and tried to feel convinced that even if this was no 

 Coelacanth, it would almost certainly be something just as in- 

 teresting. If it did prove to be a Coelacanth it must be diflPerent 

 from Latimeria because that had both first dorsal and extra tail 

 very distinctly. What should I find if I got there ? In my exhausted 

 and overwrought condition it seemed indeed as if the dice were 

 being loaded against me with all these uncertainties. Nothing was 

 certain, nothing clear-cut, the identity of the fish, whether there 

 was enough formalin, would I ever get there in time, first before 

 the thing rotted and secondly before the French took it ? Through 



