Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 100. (Budapest 2008)
Bálint, Zs.: Lepidoptera collections of historical importance in the Hungarian Natural History Museum
Hence, in a modern entomological collection every individual specimen got a detailed label with the indication at least to geographical place of origin, collecting date and the name of the collector. However in certain cases these basic information are supplemented by precisely referred collecting methods and an indication to the numerical list, in which the collecting site and circumstances are described in more details. Interestingly, FRIVALDSZKY followed both of these traditions. Purchasing the KOY collection most probably FRIVALDSZKY first of all was impressed by the beauty of the curiosity cabinet and its content. He followed to develop the collection in the same manner. Nevertheless, FRIVALDSZKY was a museologist, and because museums everywhere were serving science and not just for sheer of "loving of nature" or to exhibit the specimens, he also took the modern techniques for building a scientific collection having long series of specimens on pins. He followed also the labelling and cataloguing techniques represented by the OCHSENHEIMER and TREITSCHKE collection. In the eve of the 20 TH century, when more and more material arrived in the museum originating from modern expeditions, collecting trips and new acquisitions, FRIVALDSZKY specimens got an additional modern label, which indicated the place of origin and some of them also received the curatorial label from the drawer when the FRIVALDSZKY collection was dismantled and amalgamated in the Genaral collection (Fig. 17). Hence, via studying the HNHM Lepidoptera collections with historical importance we can see how entomologists of the baroque times were amazed by the curious beauty and diversity of the created world and how they wanted to share feeling and knowledge with other people. Later, the same kinds of people having curious love and devotion to nature were moving to a more disciplined approach to the subject, arriving to a state, when the importance of the individual collections with their material emerged to serve science for exploring a kind of biodiversity never imagined before. These people and their works appeared again in the horizon of entomologists very recently, who want to have a firm basis for the future explorations of the living word, recording how these people corresponded, collected and saved their findings, and what was the fate and what was the luck of their collections they assembled.
