Just 2 minor notes on realia (was: A little more on Iroquoian)

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Heike Bödeker wrote:
> ... , which I'd scientifically preferred to refer to as puma concolor.
> There has been some debate on whether to group this species together
> with the very archaic golden cats (profelis spp.), caracals (caracal
> caracal), possibly also servals (leptailurus serval), but there seems
> no consensus about this (maybe cold comfort to historical linguists
> that biologists have this type of group-problems, too...). ...

By way of background, I belive taxonomists have waffled over the years
(even the last 50 years) over whether to classify all (or most) felidae in
one large genus Felis, or in several - Felis (sensu stricto), Panthera,
Lynx, Puma, Caracal, Profelis, Leptailurus, etc.  I think the latter
approach is becoming more common (again).  The innocent linguist,
conslting reference works from a variety of sources and times is easily
caught unawares.

I've always found cases where the specific (the second term) changes
gender as the genus changes gender to be particularly exciting ...
And then of course there are specifics that are invariant across one or
more genders in their Latinate form - really cool.  Or how about Morus
rubra 'Mulberry'?  Tree names in -us are feminine in Latin!  Oooeee!

JEK