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

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

Aside of the furniture and collecting equipment of the Collection, also some 2 200 books, periodical volumes and about 500 reprints were burnt. The wholly burnt out Ornithological Collection, though not the biggest, was still one of the most significant in Central Europe. It contained 36 000 bird skins, of which some 20 000 originated from abroad, whilst 16 000 came from Hungary and from other areas within the Carpathians' Basin. Of its oological collection of some 22 000 carefully prepared eggs, 2 000 came from abroad, the others from our country ; being the collectings preponderantly of F. Cerva. S. L o v a s s y, E. A g á r d y, and D. N a vr a t i 1. Its comparative bone collection of about 2 500 bird specimens was one of the largest bird-skeleton collections of Europe. The main home material of the skin collection came from the captures of P. J á n y i and S. J. Petényi. In the course of time, it reached its state when it was annihilated, by the collectings and presentations of G. Szikla, O. H e r m a n, I. Chernél, Gy. Madarász, J. C s a t ó, N. Homo till a y, L. Horváth, and numerous external research associates. The more significant portions of its world material came from the following sources : the collectings of J. Xántus (California, the Great Sunda Isles), of L. D o 1 eschall (Malaya), T. D u k a (India), S. F e n i c h e 1 and L. Bíró (New Guinea, Northwestern Africa), S. Scherzen Ice hn er (Mexico), E. Holub (South Africa), K. Tóth, J. Újhelyi, Á. Vezényi, and L. V i d é k y (Brasil), 0. Herma n (Norway), B. Széchényi (Inner Asia), G. B r i c e n o, O r t u d o and B. Pózner (Venezuela), F. Königsegg and I. Megyaszay (Sudan), Chérie (Columbia), K. Glaszner (Cyprus), A. Everett (the Pacific Isles), K. Kittenberger (Eeast Africa), Ö. Kovács (Abyssinia), G y. A 1 m á s y (Turkestan), Harms (Iran, Afghanistan, Livland). Gy. Madarász (Sudan, Ceylon, Dobrudscha). Many foreign birds came into our possession also from three wholesale dealers (Schlüter, Frank, G e r r a r d). Best represented, of course, were the Passeriformes, among them, the Paradiseidae, further the Clamatores, Scansores, Psittaciformes, Cuculiformes, Trochilidae (of these, more than 3000 specimens). A heavy loss is the destruction, among others, of the 4 kivis from New Zealand, 2 lyre birds, 1 Tetrao mlokosiewizi and 1 condor. Of the extinct birds, we had specimens from two North American species: 2 migratory pigeons (Columba migratoria) and two Carolina parrots (Conurus carolinensis). In the skin collections, we had originally 133 types. Of these, about 70 species were valid, according to the revision of J. G r e s c h i k. By the unfinished revision of L. Horváth, the present curator of the Collection, however, only some 43 can be estimated as valid ; the descriptions, with one exception (L. Horváth), of Gy. Madarász, mainly from Africa and Asia, in a lesser per cent from the Indo-Malayan and South American fannal territories. The greatest treasures of the egg collection were the cuckoo eggs, collected in large numbers and from several clutches, and a series of 26 clutches of the marsh-sandpiper (Tringa stagnatilis). Of the departmental library, only the smaller, insignificant and most recent literature remained, which were housed in a room but slightly injured by the fire. Complete periodicals, large hand-books and old, almost irreplaceable classics were all annihilated. Among them, the almost entire volumes of The Ibis, The Auk, the Condor and the Journal für Ornithologie ; the complete series