David Buckley made a good point, and there's certainly no harm in living
creatures having more than one name. A friend may be "Robert," "Bob,"
"Jones," or "buddy." We call our pets as well as our mates by all sorts of
pet names (the more you can think up, the more fun it is). I'd like to make
a plug for the scientific name, to respond to David's comments about a
vernacular name conveying "as much information as a scientific name (if not
more)."

Think of the gammy bird or Common Eider. It's also _Somateria mollissima_
which means "softest down body." That Green Heron we've been discussing is
_Butorides virescens_ or "greenish bitternlike." I could go on. Some
scientific names might not be descriptive or might even be misleading, but
for reasons such as this I can sure see the value of the "classics" (Latin
and Greek) that were taught back in the ol' days.

Dennis Paulson