215 



And so my dear Sir, I do trust that you will be able to remove 

 from the minds of any of your countrymen the idea that I am 

 intending to go to your area to compete with you in these matters. I 

 do certainly feel that it would be a very great pity if the fishes of 

 the French Territories were not to be included in my large planned 

 monograph, and feel that I can rely upon the same freedom and 

 facilities for collecting as all the other countries where we have 

 worked. 



There was other correspondence with Millet, but nothing 

 further from the French authorities until August 1953, when I 

 received notification that they had decided not to grant authorisa- 

 tion to search for Coelacanths in their waters during 1953. It was 

 stated that various French and foreign scientific organisations 

 had made proposals similar to mine, and it was feared that if all 

 were permitted to operate it might have undesirable results. 

 Instead of separate expeditions, the French Government intended 

 to invite the 'Scientific Council for Africa' to consider the amal- 

 gamation of proposed expeditions into an international expedition, 

 under French leadership. During the second week of August 1953 

 a statement more or less to this effect was issued officially by the 

 French authorities, and appeared in the press in various parts of 

 the world. 



The ending of negotiations with Stuttard and this decision of 

 the French put an end to my hopes of working in the Comoro- 

 Aldabra region in 1953. The exclusion from French waters at 

 that time was an action I found regrettable in science, even with 

 the prospect of an international expedition ahead. It had earlier 

 been reported in the press that two expeditions (Italian and Swed- 

 ish) were in East African waters to hunt Coelacanths, the leader of 

 one had indeed written to me from East Africa. After the decision 

 of the French, I wondered if these expeditions would do as I had 

 planned under this ban, i.e. work at other likely places. Shortly 

 after this (late August 1953) there was a report that at least one of 

 these expeditions had gone over to Aldabra, and then it was stated 

 that one had gone to the Comores and was actually working there. 

 As this was apparently contrary to the decision of the French 

 Government, both as published and in the form communicated 

 to me, I doubted the accuracy of the report. It was, however, later 

 confirmed that not only had the Italian expedition been working 



