Vig Károly: Zoological Research in Western Hungary. A history (Szombathely, 2003)

94 Phylum Arthropoda black over the grain, first chewing off the heads, so that the reapers had only the straw left to cut. After the harvest, the swineherds took their pigs into the fields, and they ate up everything, so that nothing remained on our lands. At that time, the young locusts still could not fly and so the pigs could destroy them easily. In Hungary to the south and around the lake, the locusts did such damage to the grain that the sharecropping reapers had to go home, for want of anything to reap, for the locusts had gobbled up everything before them.' Sopron, August 11, 1693: 'About noon, many thousand million locusts came into the Balf vineyards from Hungary. They clothed everything thickly as far as Rákos. On the 23 rd, a thousand million locusts again flew in from Hungary.

.. They were driven hither and thither, but destroyed all the standing oats, millet and buckwheat that many people had' (CSÁNYI). The following appears in an account of 1749: 'There was a plague of locusts again this year. On August 19, they flew round the town and the bulk of them darkened the sun. People shot into the swarm with catapults and bullets, whereupon they flew towards Fertő and landed in the vineyards, doing much damage. On the 21st, many men went at them with rifles, pistols, hoes and other weapons. The outcome of the battle against the locusts being fortunate, locusts perished in their thousands, but not one man on our side was killed!' The Fertő district and the Hanság suffered another great plague of locusts in 1857-9 (HABERLANDT 1858; KUTHY 1926). The migratory locust (Locusta migratoria) remained common and did much damage in the whole Carpathian Basin until their original habitats were destroyed by the water regulation and drainage works. Ironically, the species has almost died out in Central Europe. It is currently an endangered species in Hungary, where the last population breeds in the wooded wilds and sandy grasslands of the Nyírség, on the brink of extinction (VARGA et al. 1990). It is interesting to scientific history that FERENC OCSKÓI OCSKAY (17751851) assembled the second oldest collection of 'Orthoptera', which contained 52 species (FRIVALDSZKY, J. 1867). As a young man, OCSKÓI OCSKAY had served as an imperial army officer, until an eye condition obliged him to retire to his estate at Ocskó (Ockov), where he took up zoology. He moved to Sopron in 1821. He donated some of his collection to the National Museum in 1829. The remainder, along with later collections of reptiles, molluscs and insects, was shown at the assembly of Hungarian physicians and natural scientists held in Sopron in 1847.

13 13 FERENC OCSKÓI OCSKAY'S collection and zoological researches were praised by SALAMON JÁNOS PETÉNYI, who also mentioned the zoological collection of RUIHIETH, steward of the livestock at Eszterháza (Fertőd). PETÉNYI, S. 1843. Értekezés a madártan születése, serdülése és növekedése felől Magyarországon (Discourse on the birth, maturation and growth of ornithology in Hungary). In BUGÁT, P., and F. FLÓR eds. Л Magyar Orvosok és Természetvizsgálók [1842. augusztus 6-8. között] Besztercebányán tartott harmadik nagygyűlésének munkálatai (Proceedings of the 3rd Grand Assembly of Hungarian Physicians and Natural Scientists [on August 6-8, 1842] in Besztercebánya [Banská Bystrica]), 52-68. Pest: Trattner-Károlyi.