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

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

an especial treasure, the same as the priceless Ammonites series of Switzerland, the fossil sponge collection from the English Cretaceous, and the type specimens of the Asiatic collections of L. L ó c z y. Concerning quantity, smaller amount of boxes, 65 in all, of our Cainozoic material, wholly destructed were : the systematical collection comprising the whole French Eocene, the also very rich French Oligocène, the comparative material from Austria (of the inner and outer alpic Viennese basins), the whole systematical comparative material from France (of the Bordeaux Basin), the Italian Miocene material as well as the Pliocene fossils from the adjacent countries and Italy. Their destruction is a very grave loss. Of the last collection mentioned above, it is especially worth mentioning, and is also grievous from a pietic point of view, that the material of L. Kossuth, collected during his exile in Torino, labelled by his own hand and perfect too from a systematical aspect, was also annihilated. Of the home collections, the Permian-Carboniferous Trilobites and Brachypodes from the Mts. Bükk perished in 1 box, the Mezozoic materials from the environment of Budapest, the Mts. Pilis, the Northern-Balaton — among them that of the Mt. Jeruzsálem, — then that of the Mts. Mecsek were wholly destroyed in 31 boxes. Our Jurassic material from the Mts. Mecsek, the Northern-Balaton and the Mts. Pilis was burnt in 15 boxes. Of the fossils of the Cainozoic, a very lamentable loss is the destruction in 3 boxes of the materials from the Transdanuvian coal deposits and the cut Nummulina collection of Hantken. In the former one, there was a recent Assilina material, with type specimens ; in the latter also numerous type specimens were annihilated. Of the specially rich Miocene material in 56 boxes, the followings were wholly pulverised : the Eger material with the Lower Miocene fonds from the Wind factory by Noszky (which was published but partly), the published Tortonian type material of Hidas, the Middle-Miocene Echinodermata material, then the Pécs and Central-Transdanuvian Sarmata materials. Further annihilated by the conflagration were 57 boxes of home and partly foreign material of the comparative vertebrate collection as well as the almost complete vertebrate material of the bone stores. Among them were the scientifically priceless Alces type from Solymár, the Prodinotherium hungaricum Éhik (type), the Caducopsis cranium (type) a Hyaenodon cranium (type) ; one of the uniques, represented by 8 specimens in the whole world only, a gigantic Aepiornys egg. Of the 4 Ichthyosaurus, that is, Mystriosaurus, 2 specimens were wholly destroyed, the other 2 being severely injured. Some valuable Glyptodon armour fragments but recently received from the Argentine were also annihilated. A severe and grave loss is the loss of the Paleontological departmental library. Of the highly valuable, now almost inacquireable and therefore irreplaceable books, monographies and periodicals of about 10 000 volumes, only some 200 copies remained in a more or less usable condition, whilst the also very valuable reprint collection of another 10 000 items was completely burnt out. Besides of the above mentioned materials and objects, 20 inventory volumes (1952—56), 32.000 index cards and 850 box indexes (all in three copies), 4 500 maps (largely geological survey maps in manuscripts), numerous artistical hand-painted genre-pictures of prehistorical times and primordial animal sculptures fell also victim to the flames.