Matskási István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 101. (Budapest 2009)
Bálint, Zs.: The butterfly taxa described by János Frivaldszky and their type material (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea)
178 Zs. Bálint Then these specimens were kept in accession parts of the collection, or became exchanged or simply put aside and discarded. This happened with many Lepidoptera type specimens that could be originally found in the IMRE FRIVALDSZKY collection ( BÁLINT, in prep.). Although at the very end of the 19 l h century the type concept was not yet crystallized as in our days (ICZN 1999), the importance of specimens on which descriptions were based became evident. In the case of JÁNOS FRIVALDSZKY'S types it is obvious that the author labelled himself specimens as type or put the label containing the name he originally proposed. This is testified by the Callerebia loczyi and Parnassius szechenyii specimens, which have special labels written by FRIVALDSZKY. The original labels of Aporia kreitneri were removed without any doubt by VELEZ and became lost. The disappearance of the Mycalesis antimus type most probably can be explained by the unlucky circumstances, whose source was VELEZ and the probability that the material itself was in bad condition as the male Callerebia polyphemus, hence it was not worth to keep. The fatal loss of type specimens not only causes problems difficult to solve for the subsequent generations of taxonomists, moreover it simply annihilate the effort, the expertise and work of the person, who worked with the material. Therefore it is the most important activity of a curator in a public scientific collection to detect, label and catalogue primary type specimens, as a honour of the former curators, as a deed for taxonomy and science in general revealing the importance of the institute or the museum. REFERENCES ANONYMUS 1924: Halottaink. (Unsere Toten.) - Folia entomologica bungarica 1: 20-21. BÁLINT, ZS. 2005: Frederick W. Goodson and his contribution to the taxonomy of neotropical hairstreak butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae: Eumaeini). - Systematics and Biodiversity 2(4): 355-373. BÁLINT, ZS. 2008: Lepidoptera collections of historical importance in the Hungarian Natural History Museum. - Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici 100: 17-35. BÁLINT, ZS. & ID. FRIVALDSZKY, J. 2009': A magyar Parnasszuson - a természetkutató Frivaldszky Imre (1799-1870). [On the Hungarian Parnassos - the naturalist Imre Frivaldszky (1799-1870)] - Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum, Budapest, in press. Annls hist.-nat. Mus. natn. hung. 101, 2009
