Dr. Kubassek János szerk.: Földrajzi Múzeumi Tanulmányok 14. (Magyar Földrajzi Múzeum; Érd, 2005)

ÉRTEKEZÉSEK - Dávid Lóránt - Kangúr Tibor — Várady György: Biharországból a Nílus vidékére: Kovács János (1816-1906)

the animals, plants and 363 prehistoric bones collected in the course of examining the caves of the Bihar mountains to the National Museum. An acknowledgement beyond our borders of his geological and mineralogical investigations is testified by his election in 1867 as a corresponding member of the Geological Association of Vienna. During 1855-56, accompanying one of his students - he took part in travel to Africa and the Near East lasting for five and a half months. Making use of the constant northnorth-west trade wind, on the Nile he got right down to Vadi Haifa to the south against the river current. J. Kovács sent a letter to the Tisza family containing 55 detailed items of professional experience, then on arriving home he published his oservations in a paper of five chapters. In spite of the restrictions, János Kovács achieved outstanding merit with his demographic, ethnographic, zoological, botanical and rock collections, his observations in climatology, anthropology and on the connection between flooding and farming along the Nile. His diverse observations and results were of great significance, for to be sure the one time student, later teacher of the Debrecen Reformed Church College was the first Hungarian researcher to carry out scientific observations in the Nile valley. After his travels to Egypt János Kovács returned to Debrecen and served Hungarian education within the walls of Reformed Church Grammar School for a further four decades. In his former school, he became the natural history and geography teacher, and on two occasions, the principal. His name is attributed to obtaining of the high-value Szőnyi mineral collection, which consists of over twenty thousand pieces, including the famous meteorite of Kaba, and its cataloguing in less than two years. He was the first to indicate the organic material content of the Kaba meteorite. The inexhaustible János Kovács was also the enthusiastic collector and caretaker of the college's three further (animals, plants, archaeology and folklore) collections. This heritage, however was destroyed during World War II. Kovács János (1816-1906)