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[Vol. 91 
he was aware. If he had specimens of any one species, he recorded 
the specimen label numbers along with collection data on the 
appropriate manuscript sheet. Most of these notes are in the New 
York State Museum. Many of the Homoptera notes are in the 
Smithsonian Institution Archives and the files of the United States 
National Museum aphid collection. 
According to the International Code of Zoological Nomen- 
clature, the type series of a species or subspecies consists of all the 
specimens on which its author bases the species (Article 72b). The 
closest available approximation to a type series for a species or 
subspecies authored by Dr. Fitch consists of those specimens that 
can be proven, through a perusal of his registers and notes, to have 
been in his collection before or during the year in which the relevant 
species or subspecies name was first made available. In the 
introduction to his Homoptera catalogue, dated February 22, 1851, 
Dr. Fitch acknowledged the loan of all of Dr. Thaddeus William 
Harris’s collection of Homoptera. In a letter to Dr. Harris, Dr. 
Fitch stated that he was forwarding copies of his Homoptera 
catalogue. He also stated that it would be a pleasure for him to add 
specimens from his collection to Dr. Harris’s collection. 2 That letter 
is dated March 1-4, 1851. 
The T. W. Harris insect collection at the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology, Harvard University, is segregated from the main collec- 
tion. In it, several of Dr. Fitch’s specimens are readily recognized by 
the label style and handwriting (Fig. 1). Some of these are specimens 
of species that Fitch described in his Homoptera catalogue. Those 
that were in Dr. Fitch’s possession before February 28, 1851 (the 
earliest publication date for the Homoptera catalogue that can be 
demonstrated by evidence) can be considered types, but they have 
never been recognized as such. In most cases, these specimens are 
part of a syntype series, and other specimens can be found in the 
New York State Museum (McCabe and Johnson 1980) or the 
United States National Museum. In these cases, lectotypes should 
be designated if that has not already been done. Other specimens in 
the Harris collection are the only known extant specimens from the 
Fitch collection that Dr. Fitch considered to be representatives of 
certain species that he authored. 
2 Fitch to Harris, 1-4 March, 1851; Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard 
University. 
