NOTES ON FRANCIS WALKER'S TYPES OF NORTH 

 AMERICAN FLIES OF THE FAMILY TACHINIDAE 



By J. M. Aldrich 

 Associate Curator, Division of Insects, United States Natio7ial Museum 



The well-known British entomologist Francis Walker described 

 numerous North American flies of the family Tachinidae in two 

 publications : List of the Specimens of Dipterous Insects in the Col- 

 lection of the British Museum, part 4, 1849; and Insecta Saun- 

 dersiana, or Characters of Undescribed Insects in the Collection of 

 William Wilson Saunders, Esq., 1852. 



At that early time but little was known of the classification of the 

 group, and Walker's descriptions were poor, even for the period. 

 The first attempt to place his species in more restricted genera was 

 by Osten Sacken, in his Catalogue of North American Diptera 

 (Smithsonian Institution, 1878). Osten Sacken had the advantage 

 of having examined many of the types in the British Museum, where 

 Walker's were all deposited. He was not a specialist in the group, 

 and but little advance in its classification had been made since the 

 time of Walker, except in the works of Rondani and Schiner, which 

 pertained only to the European members, with a few exceptions on 

 the part of Rondani. 



The first serious attempt to identify Walker's North American 

 species was by Coquillett, in his Revision of the Tachinidae of 

 America North of Mexico (Technical Series No. 7, Division of 

 Entomology, United States Department of Agriculture, 1897). Co- 

 quillett had not seen Walker's types, but he studied the descriptions 

 very carefully and believed that he had identified most of them. 

 The nomenclature that he accepted has been adopted quite generally 

 since that time, at least as to the species, although Townsend in 

 various papers expressed the opinion that Coquillett had niisidenti- 

 fied many of them. 



Maj. E. E. Austen reported the results of an examination of many 

 of Walker's types in Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. 7, 

 vol. 19, pp. 326-347, 1907. 



No. 2910.— Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 80. Art. 10 

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