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

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

of Sharpé: Catalogue of Birds ; H artert — Steinbacher: Vögel der Paläarktischen Fauna ; Natt m a n n : Vögel Mitteleuropas ; Niethammer: Deutschlands Vögelwelt ; L i 1 f o r d : Birds of Britain ; then our whole Africa literature as well as the older and recent books on the birds of the Pacific Area ; a total of 310 books and 650 reprints with 450 volumes of various periodicals. The majority of the Mammalogical Collection was housed in that wing of the building which was successfully saved. So its material stored here, then in various exhibition rooms and in another repository in an adjacent building were saved, with the exception of a large part of the big game mammals of the Africa Exhibition in the main Museum building. In spite of all this, it has suffered wellnigh irroplaceable losses : 220 items of its stock were annihilated which can no more or hardly be acquired again. In the máin building of the National Museum on the Museum Boulevard, 28 stuffed big game mammals were burnt in the dioramas of the African Exhibition, such as : lions (Panthera leo

), chimpanzees (Pan satyrus

), water antelopes (Kobus defassa), white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum), bongos (Boocerus euryceros), palas (Aepyceros melampus), maned sheep ( Ammo tragus lervia), Yimela (Damatiscus corrigum jimeta), an African elephant (Loxodonta africana), a gigantic pangolin (Manis gigantea), a Thomson gazelle (Gazella Thomsoni), a Grant gazelle (Gazella Granit), gnus (Connochaetes taurinus albojubatus), kongonis (Bubalis cokei), Chapman zebras (Equus quagga chapmani), northern wart hogs (Phacochoerus africanus), — in the greater part the most beautiful and valuable specimens of the material collected by our famous Africa explorer and hunter, K. Kittenberge r. In the loft of the Museum building in the Baross Street, 192 items of the comparative bone material of large and medium exotic and some home mammals were destructed : whole skeletons, skulls, tusks, antlers, etc. Among them, some priceless specimens, such as the complete skeletons of the European bison (Bison bonasus bonasus), the Persian lion (Panthera leo persica), a capital rhino from Java (Rhinoceros sondaicus), then gigantic elephants' tusks ; of the home material, a wild boar skull collection of 54 pieces and 18 skulls of pedigreed domestic animals. The Anthropological Department Its collections suffered heavy injuries due to the caving in of the ceiling of the second floor in the Museum building of the Baross Street. The falling debris shattered some cabinets, in which, and during the moving of the saving activities, a total of 1299 skulls were destroyed, that is, became valueless for scientific research werk. In the destructed material, which contained partly published and partly the fragments of unpublished find series, the most significant are the following: Mosonszentjános, Mosonszentpéter (an Avarie graveyard of Mongoloidé character), Alattyán-Tulát (Avarie), Polgár-Basatanya (aeneolithe), Oroszvár (IX—XI centuries), Sorokpolány (XI —XII centuries), Tápiószele (Scythe), Jászladány (the Bodrogkereszt culture from the Copper Age), Kökényzug (a neolithe-Körös culture). Many of the laboratory equipments and instruments were also destroyed : various thermostates, a desiccating cabinet, sensitive thermometers ; or were injured, such as an icebox and the centrifuge. A part of the anthropometrical