9 



Curator or Director, who was exhibition officer, scientist, as well 

 as consultant on everything else. They were pleased to have my 

 services as Honorary Curator of Fishes for their museums, which 

 I visited regularly, and they kept or sent their fish rarities for my 

 investigation. 



I tried to get trawler crews to hunt and keep unusual specimens 

 from their catches and especially from the 'rubbish', but found 

 them indifferent, and came to realise that more direct contact was 

 necessary. So I endured the miseries of small trawlers on South 

 Africa's stormy seas, often so seasick as barely able to crawl along 

 the slippery heaving decks to scratch among the slimy rubbish 

 shoved aside. 



To the crews I was no longer a remote scientist who expected 

 them to do his dirty work while he stayed in a comfortable 

 museum ashore, and they changed from indifference to interest 

 and sometimes to enthusiasm. 



I went out with small line-boats and lived with the coastal 

 trek-netters. I walked to remote lighthouses, and to coastal farms 

 and stores, always talking fish, fish, fish. All this took time and 

 effort but paid handsome dividends, and a steady stream of 

 treasures came rolling in. 



The study of fishes is very much a full-time occupation even 

 when not complicated by any other duty, but in my early days a 

 few glimpses into a work on fossil fishes set me to find odd moments 

 to explore this fascinating new, or rather ancient, world. I 

 acquired a general knowledge of the types that had lived and died 

 before our time, and found this perhaps the most absorbing of all 

 scientific fields ; but my life w^as already so desperately full that I 

 dared not indulge that desire very far. Nevertheless, those weird 

 creatures of bygone days were constantly flitting in and out of 

 my consciousness, constantly filling me with almost an agony 

 that they had gone for ever and could never be seen again. Fossil 

 fishes are comparative rarities in most parts of South Africa. 

 If it had been otherwise, I have often wondered if they would not 

 have pulled me right away. 



And so, by 1938, as all this shows, it was just as if the stage 

 had been set for the Coelacanth. I was in close contact with the 

 various museums, had by constant visits and voyages established 

 cordial personal relations with trawler crews and with the firms 



