Vig Károly: Zoological Research in Western Hungary. A history (Szombathely, 2003)

Phylum Vertebrata 159 his landlord, wishing his lordship good health in consuming them.' The classic Tractatus de re rustica Hungarorum of MÁTYÁS BÉL (1730-40) mentions the River Rába as a source of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) and ziege (Pelecus cultratus) in his description of the country's fish. GYÖRGY NEMESNÉPI ZAKÁL (1818) in a description of Őrség district commented, 'There are not many fish in the Eőrségh [sic]. The most famous is the northern pike, found mainly in standing water. There are several white fish

8 in the streams and mönyhal

9 as well... There are also flatfish in some standing waters, known as varga hal.'

10 The standard work by OTTÓ HERMAN (1887) gives the popular names of 29 fish species present in the Rába and cites altogether 30 species there. It should be noted that the European perch (Perca fluviatilis), gudgeon (Gobio gobio), ide (Leuciscus idus) and weatherfish (Misgurnus fossilis) have not been found in the Rába. In the River Zala, HERMAN follows HECKEL and KNER (1858) in citing 8 species. JÓZSEF JABLONOWSKI (1898) took over the figure of the 29 species from HERMan (1887), but listed only 28 of them. He presumably omitted the zope (Abramis ballerus) accidentally. The section Pisces in Fauna Regni Hungáriáé was written in 1902, but appeared only in 1919 (VUTSKITS 1919). Apart from recording the distribution of all fish species in Hungary and Croatia, GYÖRGY VUTSKITS processed the entire ichthyofaunistic literature. The book gives 28 species for the Rába and 8 for the Zala. It follows KÁLMÁN CHERNÉL for the Gyöngyös Brook in Vas County. VUTSKITS was the first to cite in the Zala Petényi's barbel (Barbus meridionalis petényi), which earlier accounts had not mentioned. Nor has the species been found in Western Transdanubia since. His earlier book on a similar subject (VUTSKITS 1904) also relied mainly on written records, such as HERMAN (1887) for the Rába, but he added data of his own to the species list for the Zala, bringing it up to 11. KÁLMÁN VAKARCS gave data on fish in Vas County in two of his publications (VAKARCS 1939 and 1956). He was the first to mention the occurrence of the pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus). Two sentences of his can be quoted as a warning that posterity should heed: 'The fish stocks in the waters of the district have shown a declining trend, especially for common carp, weis, crayfish and bream. Earlier everyone caught fish, but no one saw to replacing them.' JÓZSEF CSABA (1940a) cited 28 species in his account of the ichthyofauna of Csákánydoroszló. He returned to the subject of the fish in the Rába when writing about traditional fishing techniques in Csákánydoroszló, citing 31 species (CSABA 1973). He listed 5 species for the streams and smaller rivers of the Vend8 See Note 6. 9 The mönyhal is probably burbot (Lota lota), not stone loach (Noemacheilus barbatulus, known as menyhal in dialect Hungarian), although the latter may also be common in more extensive waters of the Őrség. 10 This is probably the crucian carp (Carassius carassius), which has a high back and is relatively flat (verbal communication by ZOLTÁN SALLAI). RÁCZ (1996), quoted earlier, equates it with the tench (Tinea tinea), although it has a different shape and is not flat.