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Coelacanth, and I could find not one vestige of evidence in support of 

 his view. He can hardly hold it now ! 



I have outlined the conditions under which I believe that Coelacanths 

 are likely to live. It could hardly be somewhere too remote, like Alaska 

 or Iceland. My mind at once turned to the vast reef system of East 

 Africa, and there, over thousands of miles, are to be found the very 

 conditions I have outlined. Further, one of the places where numbers 

 of Coelacanth fossils have been found is Madagascar, and the whole 

 coast of Madagascar and all the islands off East Africa, is just a series 

 of reefs of the type I could not help feeling would be just right to hunt 

 Coelacanths. So I turned my eyes and my mind towards Madagascar, 

 and said many times that our hope lay there. In 1939 the war came, and 

 most scientists had to mark time until that madness wore itself out. 

 During all this time my mind was busy on the Coelacanth, and as soon 

 as things began to clear I set about trying to organise an expedition to 

 East Africa and Madagascar to hunt for more Coelacanths. So con- 

 vinced was I that I came to look on attempts to find more of them about 

 East London as sheer waste of time. In the end all our plans came to 

 naught. I was determined to continue, but had no funds for any big 

 venture. An expedition can do much, but the mind of a determined 

 scientist can do more. After long thought I decided to prepare a leaflet 

 giving a picture of the Coelacanth and a brief account of it in English, 

 French, and Portuguese, thus covering the major languages of East 

 Africa. Without great difficulty I persuaded my University and the 

 South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research each to 

 off'er ;£ioo reward for the first two Coelacanths to be found, and this 

 was stated in the leaflet. I then had printed many thousands of the 

 leaflet, and it was distributed by various means over the whole long 

 coast-line of East Africa. I sought and received the aid of the foreign 

 governments of those territories, and numbers of the leaflets were sent 

 to their wide-spread officials, who distributed and explained them to the 

 natives. Since that time my wife and I have covered a vast area of that 

 coast in our work, always cfoing Coelacanth propaganda. It has been a 

 continual thrill to find that leaflet in the weirdest places, stuck on a pole 

 in a remote native hut, posted up in lighthouses, shops, isolated posts. 

 Now and again in some wild part a native fisherman learning who we 

 are, with gestures and grimaces from some fold in his garment pro- 

 duces a dirty cloth or paper-wrapped incredibly tattered Coelacanth 

 leaflet, and shows it to us with great pride. It was a great comfort to 

 feel that thousands and thousands of eyes were always scanning their 

 catches for this reptile-like fish, though most natives probably doubted 

 whether this loony white man would really pay so vast a sum for just a 

 fish. Our main aim has all along been to ensure that if a Coelacanth 



