Publisher's green hardcover binding with dust jacket.
x + 260pp. Illustrated.
Former owner's name stamp on front and rear endpapers. Binding tight. The original jacket has loss at the spine tail. SIGNED by Professor J.L.B. Smith on the title page.
'OLD FOURLEGS is the story of the most sensational scientific discovery in natural history of this century, told by the scientist who is the central figure throughout. It starts with the capture, just before Christmas 1938, of a peculiar fish by a South African trawler near East London. By the time that Professor J. L. B. Smith saw this fish it had been mounted and the soft parts gone beyond recovery. While almost doubting the evidence of his senses he pronounced it to be a Coelacanth, a type of prehistoric fish known only from fossils and believed to have become extinct at least fifty million years ago.
This discovery caused the greatest sensation, and as all parts of so ancient a type are of great scientific interest, it became imperative to find more specimens. Professor Smith deduced that this Coelacanth must have been a stray, whose true home probably lay somewhere in the reefs of the wild seas along East Africa. Alone in this view, indeed against the opinions of almost all other scientists, he and his wife carried out a series of arduous expeditions covering most of the wildset parts of the tropical western Indian Ocean, excepting French waters. Thousands of leaflets in English, French and Portuguese, giving a picture of the Coelacanth and offering a reward were sent to all parts including French possessions. This long lonely search over no less than fourteen years ultimately achieved success, the thrilling climax involving South Africa's Prime Minister and a dramatic flight in a military plane from South Africa to a little known island in the remote Comoro archipelago, now definitely established as the home of this living fossil.'
Added to this lot is a copy of Old Man Coelacanth by Shirley Bell.
Published by Voortrekkerpers in 1969.
Book and jacket in very good condition.
- Jacket Condition: Fair
- Binding Condition: Very Good
- Sold By: Rare Paper
- Contact Person: Armandt Marais
- Country: South Africa
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