Boros István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 8. (Budapest 1957)

Boros, I.: The tragedy of the Hungarian Natural History Museum

Ivigtut (their crystallographic characters having been worked out by Krenner) feil all before the flames. As in every mineralogical collection, that is, Exhibition, the silicate crystals were also represented by the most variously colored and sized specimens in our Collection. None of them escaped. The large, water-clear quartz-pieces from Bourg d'Oison burst to fragments the same as the multicolored amethysts, citrines, rosequartzes, etc. The losses suffered by our opal collection is almost inestimable. The majority of the cut opals from Vörösvágás, a collection of 366 923 pieces, containing from millet-sized to centimeter large specimens and pieces of wonderful transparency and hues, have all perished ; the pieces saved have lost their color, became intransparent, opaque, and so more or less valueless. The same was the destiny of the rich precious-stone collection, containing rough and cut gems. The finest pieces of our superb calcites were also ruined ; the today irretrievable specimens of the Iceland spars from the now exhausted mines of Iceland, together with the Hungarian calcite pieces many times mentioned in literature ; the wonderful rhodocrosite crystals with the Kapnikbánya specimens of worldfame, made especially famous by the accompanying helvine crystals. The destruction of our cerussite collection is also a sore loss, since the material of Hungarian localities, worked out also monographically, was also destroyed. Numerous beautiful feldspar specimens perished too, among them crystals of egregious sizes and from various sites of the world. A heavy loss is the destruction of a perfect beryl crystal, 0,5 m high, together with the precious stone-varieties of beryllium ; among them also perfectly water-clear large emeralds, aquamarines, yellow (Takovaya, Ural) and greenish-yellow (Minas Geraes) beryl crystals were annihilated. Perfectly shaped and large-sized crystals of the colorful garnets, represented by numerous specimens in our collection, fell also victim to the conflagration. Especially the faultlessly colored crystal of the rare uvarovite, cut into a precious stone, had a great value among them. The flames destroyed our topazes from Miask and Mursinka, then from Brasil, together with the famous crystal of the bluish-green Brasilian euclase, the exceedingly beautiful hemimorphite pieces of Rézbánya and the exquisite specimens of our turmaline collection, among them a wonderful specimen of its pink variety, the rubellite, a crystal with complete faces, 9 cm long and 3 cm thick, found in the Isle Elba. The mere enumeration of the several destroyed minerals is not my task, so I wish yet to point out the followings only. Together with the excellent pieces of zeolites, the rich collection of niobates and tantalates were also wholly destructed; the various phosphate and vanadate specimens, the wonderful crystals of vivianite from Óradna and Kisbánya, the marvellous skorodites from Minas Geraes, the schafarzikite specimens now no more to be found, yeremyewite and rhodizite, the great rarities of Eastern Siberia, ludwigite, known only from Vaskő, now not to be found any more; the szájbélyite from Rézbánya; the irreplaceable urvölgyite and libetenite from Libetbánya ; the whole series of wonderfully formed gypsum crystals from Gánt ; the curiously formed crystals of wolframite from Felsőbánya ; of the organical compounds, the ajkaite, telegdite, kiscellite and elaterite. A very big loss, not alone for the Museum but for the whole world of science, is the destruction of the meteorite collection of world fame of our Mine-