Mummies, bats, dogs…
MúzeumCafé 10.
For a long time I’ve been fascinated by the first inventory book of the Department of Zoology, which dates from 1821. Let’s look for it in the attic of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. No cobwebs or thick dust here! No owls or bats will scare us, though there are plenty in the air-conditioned stores of the renovated interior. The inventory’s tables are filled in by hand. Headers: No. – Name/ Név – Stück – Patria – Anmerkung/Notes. A charming signal about Hungary during the Reform Age: German, Latin and Hungarian words are mixed. Let’s first see the inventory of mammals. No. 1. Mumia aegyptiaca – Translata ad ca–meram antiquitatum, i.e. an Egyptian mummy. It could have been a human mummy or perhaps a cat mummy. No. 2. Vespertilio auritus in Spiritu – ist auf-gestellt/made to stand up. Mammal No. 2 was a long eared bat. We have it no longer – instead there are 5,000 other bats. Dr Gábor Csorba chases after them with a net as light as air at forest edges and in caves. He describes new species from the Far East every year. No. 3. Canis familiaris – debebat die 20ta Junii 824 abjici (Domestic dog – its removal was ordered on 20 June 1887). No. 6. Canis vulpes – Rejected in 1887. Dr Szunyoghy. The brief note about this cunning fox immediately recalls some noted predecessors. The person who made the note, János Szunyoghy, was in charge of the Mammals Collection from 1954 and was a member of an African expedition to supplement species destroyed in the terrible fire of 1956. He had the right to make notes in his own handwriting in the then already one and a half century old volume. The Bird Collection’s inventory begins on the third page. No. 2. Falco assifragus m. ist Aquila albicilla – being full of moths it was thrown out from its closet after Petényi’s death. Not only was this white-tailed eagle sacrificed. Similar records were registered in high numbers next to the 414 birds belonging mainly to native species in Hungary. Until World War II there was no effective insecticide which could have protected them against pestiferous moths and museum insects. The army of insects, hungry for skin, feather and hair, not only worried the natural scientists – they also caused problems for the ethnographic collection. In the following year various items are listed according to their origin, e.g. 73 skulls donated by István Dreher’s family (human male and female, stallion and mare, cattle, sheep, goat, pheasant, crow, dove, squirrel, hedgehog, bat). Under Acquisitions of the year 1824 individual increments can already be seen. There are also intriguing data about the then still separate Pest and why it was that donations were only made from there. Interest in the Balkans can be detected from 1834. The department consciously collected species abroad rather than just receiving specimens fortuitously. Mus pratensisfrom Baron Ferencz Ocskay – It was only a white mouse in wine liquid (ethyl alcohol). But a decade before it was still good to accept a White mouse from Mr Jósef Zimmerman, milliner in Pest. The acquisitions in 1846 included three specimens of greater mole-rats, of which two were sent to the Washington Smithson (sic!) Institute in 1867. (The greater mole-rat is a rare rodent with a mole’s habitat in Hungary.) The record about the overseas scientific connection signals that the Department of Zoology had become of age.