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

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

mostly home material. A box containing exotic material, among them some specimens of Drurya antitnachus was destroyed in this way. Besides these, about 1 000 valuable specimens were lost. Another thousand specimens were wholly demolished for the causes that some boxes became intensely hot, or that glass fragments fall on the butterflies, pulverising them utterly. About 10 000 specimens, damaged partly by such happenings, will however possibly be saved by careful re-setting. The damages suffered by the famous Treitschke collection are especially grievious, since some 12 of its original boxes became wet, a few specimens got broken and some suffered wing injuries. During extinguishing, a considerable part of the departmental library also became wet or drenched. By the destruction of the Diptera Collection, the irreplaceable loss will be felt as much by the Hungarian as by international science. Of the 250 000 dipterons which fell victim to the fire, only some 50 000 specimens remained, the families of the group Acalyptratae, the Anthomyidae and some smaller families of the Nematocera which were being worked on by external research associates. Nothing remained of the alcoholic fly, mite and gnat larval materials nor of the gnat and flea slides. About one halfth of the Hungarian material of the destroyed Collection originated from the collectings of K. Kertész, Z. Szilády, Á. Soós and F. Mihályi; the other consisted of the incorporated private collections. Among the latter, by far the most valuable was the perfectly identified systematical collection of about 30 000 specimens of the Jésuite teacher J. T h a 1h a m m e r. Very valuable were the collections of F. P i 11 i c h from Simontornya, of A. Ruff from Magyaróvár and of K. Sajó from Őrszentmiklós. The palearctical dipterous material consisted mainly of the collectings of K. Kertész in Germany, of J. T h a 1 h a m m e r from Dalmatia and Tirol, of L. Bíró from Crete, of A. Lendl from the Near East, and of exchange and gift materials. Its majority came from the Pokorny collection from Austria. The exotic material consisted chiefly of the collectings of Hungarian explorers about the turn of the century ; the one of L. Bíró from New Guinea, of K. Kittenberger and Ö. Kovács from Africa, of E. Csiki from Asia, yet it was also considerably augmented by exchange materials and presentations. A large part of the Collection was worked out by famous specialists who described many new species, so it contained numerous types. The number of the types lost is more than 3000 among them the types of Aldrich, Bezzi, Kertész, Kieffer, Mannheims, Pleske, Pokorny, S m i t z, Stein and Stróbl, and v. d. W u 1 p. In the departmental library, more than 6000 books and reprints were burnt, among them the now almost irretrievable works of the classics of dipterology, those of M e i g e n, L o e w, Robineau — Desvoidy, Theobald, etc. Together with them, notes, collecting diaries, drawings, manuscripts, and also the furniture of the Collection perished. The Malacological Collection was also completely destroyed which is the more regrettable as — though it was not one of the biggest ones in the world — it surely belonged to the more significant ones with its alcoholic material for anatomical purposes, stored in 3 full-packed cabinets, and with its conchological material of 12000 species crammed in 900 boxes of 22 cabinets.