Jim Shields answers a question I asked on this forum early last year. How many of you remember the brief period when Tulipa fosteriana made the rounds as Tulipa fosterana? Or Tulipa bakeriana as Tulipa bakerana? There are others! The "if it ends in r" rule Jim cites was at play there. However, you should not expect universal application of this rule. Why? Because it is based on linguistic principles which are not apparent to most people. Because the symbol r represents many different phonemic phenomena in different languages ( or for that matter, within the same language), this rule has to be applied judiciously. In other words, don't apply the rule by rote. If past practice is any gauge, most people will not understand the rule and will apply it indiscriminately. Native speakers of English will be among the worst offenders because our language is so different from the romance languages whose esthetics the "after r" rule reflects. Thus, what started as an idea well grounded in linguistics will become a silly spelling witch- hunt. And isn't there a more basic problem: what sense does it make to establish such arcane rules, rules based on sound linguistic principles, if you then turn around and pronounce the words as if they were English (a language in which the rules in question do not apply)? Jim McKenney