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

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

THE LAST PERIOD OF CLASSIC MUSEUM HERPETOLOGY The soil zoological collection trips marked with the name of JÁNOS BALOGH, professor at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, played a great role in the increase of the material of the museum. The first was the South American soil zoological expedition to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in 1965-66 (participants were JÁNOS BALOGH, ISTVÁN ANDRÁSSY, IMRE LOKSA, SÁNDOR MAHUNKA and ANDRÁS ZICSI). This expedition brought some interesting material for DELY also: he wrote his one and only paper about tropical reptiles based on the examination of four specimens oïAnops kingi (Amphisbaenidae) (DELY 1970). The second South American zoological expedition in 1966 to Bolivia brought back 238 specimens of amphibians and reptiles. Significant herpetological material arrived from the collecting trips by GYÖRGY TOPÁL to Argentina ( 1961 ), India ( 1966-67: 84 specimens, and 1979-80: 143 specimens), and Vietnam (1966). ZOLTÁN KASZAB, coleopterist and director general of the Hungarian Natural History Museum added 130 specimens during his Mongolian expeditions. FERENC ZlLAHY taxidermist collected 59 specimens in Tunisia. Most of these items, however, have been remaining unidentified in the collection until today. In 1973 DELY spent six weeks in Algeria with preparator FERENC ZlLAHY on an almost 6,000 km long collecting trip . This expedition ended with a tragic accident, which had an influence on the rest of DELY'S life. They were chasing jerboas in the middle of the night with a car in the desert, when a gunshot accidentally hit his left thigh. Though his leg was saved thanks to his composure and to repeated operations, he never recovered fully, his thighbone broke two times more during his life, and the painful vicissitudes escorted him until the end of his life (DELY 1975b). DELY wrote about the incident only tangentially and in an easy way in his expedition report: " ...our two-month stay in Algeria was prosperous and successful - apart from the sad, but fortunately ending accident - not only to ourselves, but also to the Museum." The collected material lists 232 amphibians and reptiles, 14 birds, 55 mammals and more than 3,500 invertebrates (mainly flies and snails). No scientific paper was published about the herpetological procession of the material. DELY with his wife, ÁGNES DRASKOVITS dipterist went for the fourth expedition of the museum to North Korea in June-July of 1977 (Fig. 40). This was one of the many expeditions, which grounded the fame of our Museum with their huge material collected in East Asia (DELY & DELY-DRASKOVITS 1978). It can be read in their report that they returned home with 249 amphibian and reptile specimens (and almost 35,000 (!) invertebrate ones, about half of which were flies). Out of the 28 days spent there, 11 were collecting days: the usual days around Pyongyang, capital of North Korea (163 amphibians + 4 reptiles), the ones in the Kumgang-san (Diamond Mountains) (48 amphibians + 3 reptiles), and they also managed to get to the northern, rarely opened high mountain range called Paekdu-san (31 amphibians). Only two of the subsequent 21 HNHM expeditions got there. One herpetological paper was written as a direct result of the study of Korean lizard specimens (DELY 1981b). It is about the diversity of Eremias argus; DELY, however, later used these observations for his morphological research about the headscale-patterns of the European lacertid lizards as well.