Oooops. I inadvertently missent a message to tweeters that I
intended to send to one correspondent. For clogging up tweeters--
Mea culpa. And I hereby vow to deal with BIRDS, not WORDS.

However, Stephan Jay Gould sees significant comparisons between
the evolution of our language and the evolution of our natural world.
One of his chief ideas is that both are the products of the contingent
histories of individual words or individual species.

Good auspices (fr. "auspex--"avis" + "-spex": bird seer).

--Jim Lyles
Tacoma