Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 91. (Budapest 1999)

Kázmér, M. ; Papp, G.: Minerals from the Carpathians in an eighteenth-century British collection

The collection holds 68 specimens from late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century Hungary (now Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania). We made an attempt to identify the collectors and the localities. Identifying the specimens is preliminary only, and is based on the information contained in the entries of the printed catalogue. A precise identification should need the on-site studies of an expert mineralogist in Cambridge, and detailed investigations beyond visual inspection. Appendix 1 contains the relevant entries of the catalogue supplemented by remarks on the specimens. Some paragraphs of this paper has originally been published in the Journal of the History of Collections (KÁZMÉR 1998). This version provides full details of Carpathian records in the catalogue, supplemented by remarks on the specimens preserved in Cambridge. Significant additions concern the collectors as well. Sixteenth- to eighteenth-century catalogues of mineral collections, especially those drawn up by scholarly collectors are of special importance to the history of mineralogy, as their number considerably exceeds that of contemporaneous mineralogical textbooks. These catalogues reflect not only the views on the system of mineralogy but, in lack of contemporary topographical mineralogies, provide unique information on the mineralogical knowledge of the then known world and sometimes even the contacts among collectors can be traced from them. From our point of view these catalogues have a special importance. Hungary (at that time extending practically to the whole area within the range of the Carpathians), was one of the birthplaces of mineral collecting (WILSON 1994), and many contemporary documents refer to mineral collections (PAPP et al. 1991, PAPP 1994). The oldest preserved catalogues and specimens, however, are not earlier than the late eighteenth century, due to the stormy history of this territory. Data on early collectors and collections in the Carpathian area are scattered in catalogues of collections accumulated in other countries. This study is part of a systematic effort in gathering and interpreting collecting-related data from the region. JOHN WOODWARD (1665-1728) JOHN WOODWARD was the foremost British geologist of the period preceding HUTTON, SMITH and LYELL. He was born in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, England, on May 1, 1665. He studied medicine and natural sciences in the house of Dr. PETER BARWICK, Physician in Ordinary to King CHARLES II. From 1692 he was "professor of physick", i.e. medicine in Gresham College, then the only university of London, until his death in 1728. In 1693 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. WOODWARD'S interest in geology was aroused by a botanical visit to the Cotswolds, studded with exposures of richly fossiliferous Jurassic rocks. Here he first became aware of the existence of fossil remains of marine organisms. The first fruit of his new interest was a book entitled An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth (1702), which has been reprinted several times and was translated into Latin, French, Italian, and German. It advocated and emphasized that fossil remains were organic in origin, a view by no means universally accepted at that time, some still