Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 100. (Budapest 2008)

Korsós, Z.: History of the Herpetological Collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum

One of his first works was to participate in the large task coordinated by ViLMOS SZÉKESSY (1907-1970): discovering the wildlife of the Bátorliget Bog, eastern Hungary (Fig. 38). An interesting herpetological feature of the work was the Viviparous Lizard (Zootoca vivipara), which is a montane species in the neighbouring countries and which was first found in the Carpathian Basin by OLIVÉR GEDULY next to Ocsa in Felsőbabád in 1923 (GEDULY 1923, see also above). This is a part of the Alföld, the Great Hungarian Plain, typically formed like the huge Asian steppes. The occurrence of the Viviparous Lizard was first indicated in the Bátorliget Bog - which is regarded as a relict habitat from the Ice Age near to the edge of the Plain - by ENDRE DUDICH and GYULA ÉHIK in 1925-26 (DUDICH 1926). In the Museum's project, FEJÉRVÁRYNÉ was there to collect once in 1948, DELY twice in 1952 - after then he wrote the part about the herpetofauna in SZÉKESSY'S book (DELY 1953). This lizard species later became the favourite subject of DELY'S many scientific papers and of his research concerning xhtpholidosis (headscale pattern) diversity in lizards (e.g. DELY 1981^). One of DELY'S invaluable merits was the reconstruction of the Herpetological Collection, and the restoration of it from nil to nearly 15,000 specimens (Fig. 37). For an instance of his extended efforts, we have at our disposal his correspondence with KARL F. BUCHHOLZ, Curator of Herpetology at the Museum und Forschungsinstitut Alexander Koenig, Bonn (courtesy of WOLFGANG BÖHME). In the letters they went into details of exchange of museum specimens as well as reprints and other library items. The vertebrate collections (the fish, the amphibian-reptile, and the bird collections) were the ones having suffered the most from the tragedy of 1956. BOROS, director general of the museum, organised the replacement of the collections with determination and enthusiasm which gave power and hope to all the employees. He gave all the help he could acquire through his connections to the curators in order to reach the threefold target he placed before them: he encouraged the implementation of Hungarian collecting trips, the requests for donations from foreign fellow-institutes, and he supported the realisation of the most promising foreign collecting expeditions. While the first two were relatively simple tasks and mainly required vocation and diligence, the latter one required a financial support greater than the musem could afford. BOROS did not gave up, though. He wrote a letter to the government of the Soviet Union, for example, in order to ask for help to organise a collecting trip to China. He wanted to send an expedition, and had recourse to the Soviet authorities to let it travel through the country duty-free. He did not get an answer, though. BOROS, however, wanted to grab every opportunity to make the necessary collecting trips as profitable as possible. It was not his fault, that many of these expeditions could not be realised. Egypt was the first target in the program of the Natural History Museum to replace the lost material (Fig. 39). There was an intergovermental agreement between the two countries, and with the purpose of the possible restoration of the famous Africa Exhibition a four-month-long collecting journey was realised in 1957. The expedition was led by DELY, with three other participants, LAJOS HORVÁTH ornithologist, LÁSZLÓ GOZMÁNY lepidopterist, and ISTVÁN VlSÓVÖLGYI taxidermist. Firstly, they had to spend two months on a boat on the Mediterranean Sea from Budapest to Alexandria. At the end, the collected