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unchanged through the centuries, it is at least possible that their soft 

 parts may also still be much the same. 



We may therefore be able to learn something of what the internal 

 organs of creatures of so long ago were like. This may go a long way to 

 clearing the evolutionary picture. Most people know that a developing 

 embryo shows features which are believed to be clues to ancestral forms. 



One remarkable Coelacanth fossil suggests that they produce the 

 young alive. This means that once we start getting female Coelacanths 

 with unborn young, it may be possible to peer into the remote past of 

 organic life. I can imagine the astonishment of a biologist if he finds 

 an early Coelacanth embryo with no jaws and a shell-cased head. 



Some Questions 



Here are some of my jostling thoughts. What is the composition of 

 the flesh of the Coelacanths? What are its component amino-acids? 

 The natives report that when boiled it goes to jelly; that is interesting. 

 The Coelacanth just drips oil ; what is its nature, and will it help us to 

 decide whether fish-oil was really the origin of our mineral oil-deposits ? 

 What was the nature of the cells in the earliest creatures ? Did they have 

 a liver? Did they have spiral valves in the intestines? What sort of 

 digestive juices did they have ? Have they perhaps not characteristic 

 unchanged internal parasites? How did jaws develop? (The first 

 fishlike creatures had only soft mouths.) 



There is hardly a limit to what we may learn through the Coelacanth. 

 It may indeed prove to be a sort of H. G. Wells's 'Time Machine', 

 only always in reverse. I hope to get yet more information from the 

 Coelacanth when an absolutely complete fresh specimen is caught. 



It will need the services of a team of experts before all the secrets of 

 this ancient fish lie exposed. After one partial and one not quite com- 

 plete Coelacanth, I should like a real whole fish. Will some person with 

 a good seaworthy vessel of fair size fitted with refrigeration, give up 

 next August and September and meet my wife and me at the Comores 

 to help us search — even if others get there before us ? 



