i86 



schooner was smashed and sunk, beyond any salvaging, a tragic 

 sequel to its eventful participation in the Coelacanth adventure. 

 Hunt apparently lost everything, though, providentially covered 

 by insurance, he has since found another vessel. For a time he 

 stopped trading about the Comores or anywhere in French waters, 

 but recently he has written from there again. 



Regrets for Hunt's misfortune are of added poignancy, for had 

 such a cyclone caught us at Pamanzi, we might have had more of 

 the Comores than we bargained for. It was a close enough shave. 



Dzaoudzi and the whole of Pamanzi and Mayotte from the air 

 were pleasant to the eye, but the damage wrought by this cyclone 

 to buildings, plantations, gardens, and the vegetation was, 

 according to reports, both devastating and heartbreaking, and will 

 take many years of labour, and many years of persuasion and 

 encouragement by the officials, to repair. In such parts you see 

 men labouring earnestly to administer the territories they control, 

 living in discomfort, far from their real homes and congenial 

 company, in constant danger of deadly or crippling, often almost 

 incurable, diseases, and one wonders why on earth they do it, 

 quite often when the peoples for whom they labour clearly 

 do not appreciate this or desire their presence. They are the last 

 of this passing phase of 'Colonial' administration, the con- 

 descending gesture of White superiority that is arousing in- 

 creasing resentment in the awakening consciousness of existence 

 that is stirring in the backward ebony mind. Where will it all 

 end? 



I have told previously of my voluminous monograph on what 

 remained of the first Coelacanth, and which would have been 

 even more ample had the specimen not been recalled for exhibi- 

 tion. Even with what had been lost in this second specimen, the 

 full investigation of the various parts of the body would mean many 

 years of careful investigation. Such work is slow, for it involves 

 the most delicate manipulation. Our knowledge of structure and 

 life comes from many years of intensive study by a series of leading 

 experts. It has progressed so far that the proper study of a whole 

 organism has really got beyond the powers of any single man. 

 Scientists have therefore specialised, one man often devoting 

 his whole life to the study of only one organ such as the eye, the 

 kidney, the pituitary, or the liver. 



