Dr. Éva Murai szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 1. 1982 (Budapest, 1982)

Forró, L.: In memoriam Jenő Daday

and applied zoological collections for teaching purposes, as well as establishing a library. Most of the collections he obtained through utilizing his many international contacts, the goverment subsidy provided to the department was used almost exclusively for acquisition of books and subscribing to journals. Based on his lecture notes, he wrote a book called "Applied zoology". As head of the department, DADAY was successor of Géza ENTZ, sen., and he managed to keep the institute alive, but upon his death in 1920 the department was finally reorganized. Over half of DADAY'

s scientific works deal with Crustacea. He was one of the most renowned crustaceologists of his time, and his name is well-remembered even today. He was the first specialist in the Hungarian National Museum to work on Crustacea and he was responsible for setting up a collection, primarily made up of lower Crustacea. DADAY was greatly interested in Entomostraca ever since his early days in Kolozsvár. He was assigned by the Transylvanian Museum Society to do several collecting trips in Transylvania, he studied the microfauna of the Kolozsvár environs, the Mts. Retyezát, the lakes SzentAnna and Mohos and the salt lakes of Déva, etc. He published a catalogue of the Crustacea of Transylvania in 1884. Later, while on the staff of the museum, he led field expeditions to most parts of the country, he collected from the lakes of Mts. Tátra, the Lake Balaton, the Lake Fertő, the Lake Velence, around Budapest and Tata and the sodic ponds in the lowlands. He was a good collector with excellent abilities to chose the right site for collecting. An indication of his thorough, intensive collecting activity is that although he usually collected only once at a given locality, for instance, in the Lake Fertő and in many lowland sodic ponds he was able to collect surprisingly many species. First he published his results in several shorter papers, later he monographed several of the larger taxa. He described several new species of Crustacea from Hungary. Apart from their significant contribution to systematics and faunistics, his papers also contained many important data on ecological and life history aspects of the various species. He was the first to study the microfauna of the, from the limnological point of view so unique sodic ponds characteristic for the Carpathian Basin. He found that many species were characteristic for these waters: to sum up, he said "... by and large, the microfauna of the sodic waters bears the characteristics of inland waters as regards components and abundance. The constant occurrence of a few, characteristic species, however, do lend unique features to these waters." This statement is valid even today, as well, recent studies provided data only as regards the characteristic species. In spite of his great lexical knowledge, DADAY was always far too cautious to make any theoretical generalizations. DADAY monographed the Hungarian species of Branchipus, Cladocera, Copepoda and Ostracoda, which are fundamental works of these taxa for studies in Hungary. He wrote chapters on crustaceans in the series Fauna Regni Hungáriáé and the Balaton monograph, also on some other taxa which no one would undertake to study (e.g. Mollusca, Pisces, etc.). DADAY'

s many-sided research activity in Hungary gained him international reputation. He reported on material collected by famous Hungarian collectors of his age. Samples of plankton were collected for him by Lajos BIRO in New Guinea, by László ALMÄSI in Asia-Minor, and Ernő CSIKI collected for him on the Eugene ZICHY expedition in Russia and Siberia. Several foreign collectors also sent materials to DADAY for analysis (from Paraguay, Syria, Patagonia, India, etc.). His enormous, comprehensive studies on the plankton of these areas are fundamental works for the study of the microfauna of the inland waters for these regions of the world. DADAY contributed to the knowledge of crustaceans of German East Africa, South America, Ceylon describing 104 species of crustaceans from East Africa, 118 from Paraguay, 49 from Ceylon. Professor ANNANDALE, of the Calcutta Museum sent him a rich material from the East Indies, which was actually DADAY' s last larger projects. He finished his manuscript in 1918 describing 404 species of crustaceans, but this work was never published. He monographed Phyllopoda Anostraca, and his work on Phyllopoda Conchostraca is unique, published in 5 parts between 1914 and 1927 in Paris. In this publication he dealt with material from all over the world, describing many taxa. He discussed the distribution of the species and established that the species are not much variable, but represent ancient and static forms. DADAY' s papers on the anatomy of crustaceans are also important apart from the hydrobiological and systematical papers that he wrote. He described the fine structure of the striated muscle of ostracods. Due to his achievements and international reputation, DADAY was able to set up a collection and a very valuable library that were unparalleled at that time. After his death, his library, hydrobiological collection and microscopical preparations were entrusted to the care of the National Museum (Natural History Museum today), where his collection of reprints is housed.