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proper to science. Any scientific statement or theory should be preceded 



by *As far as we know at present. . . .' It was a salutary lesson. 



All intelligent human beings have an almost instinctive deep interest 

 in living things, and there are few who are not fascinated by the life 

 of past ages. 



During the past century more and more scientists hare turned their 

 attention to unravelling the threads of the course and development of 

 life on the earth, and a marvellous story it is. Not only have many 

 books about it been produced, but some countries have life-size exhibits 

 portraying extinct creatures and plants of past times based on re- 

 constructions made by scientists. 



Portraying or modelling a creature from fossil remains, often in- 

 complete or put together from dispersed fragments, is, of course, 

 bound to be partly guess-work. How can one know that this work is 

 sound? There is always a tendency to go too far. For example, some 

 workers have managed to produce models of the brains of some of the 

 long-extinct forms. It is marvellous work. One method is to take a 

 fossil skull that is now all stone and to grind it down a fraction of an 

 inch at a time, making a wax film at each stage, and when these wax 

 films are all put together in their proper order, there is a model of the 

 brain. Those that have been prepared in this way look quite convincing. 

 However, one sceptical worker has cast doubt on the value of this, for 

 he has shown that casts of the inside of the skulls of modern fishes, at 

 least, are by no means accurate models of the actual brains that come 

 from those skulls. 



Nevertheless, the appearance of the Coelacanth did give much 

 increased confidence in the ability of palaeontologists to reconstruct 

 with accuracy, for their models and pictures of Coelacanths were on 

 the whole fairly close to the real live fish. Reconstructions exhibited in 

 museums make the Coelacanths of past ages look rather stodgy and 

 wooden, and indeed they are labelled that way. This certainly does not 

 apply to the 1938-55 models. By human standards the appearance of 

 the Coelacanth can best be described as 'tough and terrifying*. This is, 

 however, not as important as the fact that the reconstructions were 

 fairly accurate, so that we may reasonably expect models of other 

 creatures to be equally close to what they really were. It has given 

 everyone increased confidence in this type of reconstructive work. 



The discovery of the Coelacanth has focused attention on how very 

 little we really know of life in the sea. That 'Man's dominion ends with 

 the shore' is indeed very true. While we control virtually all life on 

 land, we have a far from complete knowledge of life in the water and 

 practically no control there at all. Within the confines of London or 

 Paris, for example, there is very little wild life of any kind on the land, 



