Szakáll Sándor - Jánosi Melinda: Minerals of Hungary (Topographia Mineralogica Hungariae 4. Miskolc, 1996)

A SHORT HISTORY OF TOPOGRAPHICAL MINERALOGY IN HUNGARY 1. The beginnings ( -1860) The first papers reporting of minerals in Hungary date from the XVIIth centuries. The authors make note of what they observed in course of their journeys - BROWNE (1673); TOWNSON (1797); ESMARK (1798) — tell of the mines visited and the minerals that are to be found there. To Ignaz von Born we owe a particularly valuable work; he visited the most important mining sites in Transylvania, Banat, Upper and Lower Hungary (BORN, 1774). Some of the authors (FRIDVALDSZKY, 1767; FICHTEL, 1780 and 1791) make use of works of reference besides their personal experience. SCOPOLI (1776) in his brilliantly illustrated book expounds the minerals accompanying the lodes of Selmecbánya (Fig. 1). The last quarter of the XVIIIth century saw the publication of systematical works on mineralogy (BENKO, 1786; ZAY, 1791). These, while describing minerals allude to several Hungarian localities. Different from these works starting out from mineralogical species and as a rule merely listing localities is ZIPSER's book (1817) that gives particulars about the localities which are set in alphabetical order (Fig. 2). The only issue of the mineralogical periodical of JONAS (1820) also contains precious data relating to mineral topography (Fig. 3). The last great "geological itinerary" by BEUDANT (1822) is to be mentioned for its richness in mineralogical data. Jonas's early death (1821) was a great setback to mineralogy in Hungary; for a long time no topography, or in fact any mineralogical work of significance was published. The minerals that were brought to light by the flourishing mining activity were discussed by mostly Austrian mineralogists. They described several new species from Flungary (Fig. 7). The situation changed only in the mid-century with the coining of József Szabó and later of József Krenner.