Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

FOREWORD
When Richard M. Laws retired in 1996 after a long watch as seal and whale biologist
in Antarctica and elephant and hippo biologist in Africa, director of BAS and finally
Master of St. Edmunds College in Cambridge, he sat down to write his memoirs.
Sadly, however, before this task was completed he suffered a stroke, which, without
compromising his mind and memory unduly, rendered him unable to operate
computers, and his work therefore ground to a full stop.
At the time of my last sabbatical in Cambridge in 2010 it was quite obvious that
nobody in all England felt the urge to help my old friend and that his very many
years of work was in danger of being lost. So, for the lack of others, and, for old
times’ sake, I took upon myself to organize the material with the aim of getting it
published. Little did I know that the material consisted of an unorganized number of
drafts of more than 50 chapters in various stages of completion. In addition the
material was written on outdated computers with programs that are now long
obsolete and the files were consequently very hard to access. In fact, I doubt if it
could have been done without the assistance of a young Norwegian computer
wizard called Peter Munch-Ellingsen.
Luckily, with the same assistance, it has been possible to retrieve electronic versions
of many of Dick’s excellent artistic drawings, which have been included as vignettes
to many of the chapters. They are not all relevant to the contents of the chapters but
they certainly show Dick’s excellent artistic talent.
I have organized the material as best as I can into 3 parts with altogether 51 chapters.
In so doing there is bound to be some overlap, but to avoid that would require
rewriting of several chapters, which is way beyond the scope of this project. Many
times the drafts contained labels saying “Expand”. Obviously I have not done so.
There were also several labels saying “Check!”, which I have not done either.
At the end I have done a rough spell check of the manuscript. In so doing I have used
the Windows spell check and most likely made a mix of English and the American,
and sometimes I have struggled with English, Celtic, Norwegian and African slang
which is used extensively. Hopefully the result is comprehensible, if not perfect, but
this has been a rescue and salvage job with little in it for me, except for the comfort of
having saved what otherwise would have been lost.
Tromsø, 4. October 2012.
Arnoldus Schytte Blix
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