THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994 TAG: 9406250193
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
DATELINE: 940625 LENGTH: Medium
They were no different in taste from regular watermelons with red meat, he said. ``You could close your eyes and taste one and then the other and not be able to tell them apart,'' he said.
{REST} On the outside, the red and yellow kinds were green. Only he who planted them could identify one from the other before they were cut.
Mary Ella Bowen of Norfolk also reports that her family in Stanley, N.C., raised red and yellow melons. Both were delicious.
The question of similar varieties also arises in a dozen responses to a column about a species of egret in the Norfolk Botanical Garden.
I called a bird in a photograph a snowy egret. ``Wrong!'' came a chorus of bird-watchers identifying it, variously, as a common egret, an American egret or a great egret.
The snowy egret is smaller, more delicate, says David Hughes, a descendant on his mother's side of John James Audubon; but the other three names - common, American, and great - fit the same egret.
The American Ornithologists Union has dubbed it officially ``the great egret.'' Or, if you hail from Halifax County in Southside Virginia, home of the late Gov. William M. Tuck, the ``gret'' egret.
Ordinarily I am against the AOU's name changing, first because, being conservative, I suspect any change; second, the AOU's new name usually isn't as satisfying.
It renamed the Baltimore oriole - with its lovely, rolling syllables - to ``northern'' oriole. What the AOU ought to do is let a poet pick new names.
But it is far better, I must admit, to call the egret ``gret'' than ``common.'' None of God's handiwork could be termed ``common,'' my aunt used to say.
```Guy-boy,'' she would instruct, standing before me, dark eyes glowing, ``you must never call anybody `common.' The Bible says that he who calleth his brother `fool' is in danger of ruination, but it is much worse to call him common.''
Now don't call or write to say that it is laid out in the Bible as `damnation,' not `ruination.' Nor tell me it is not in the Bible.
You would be citing the King James Version; I am relying on the version handed down by my Aunt Mamie, having learned, later on, that versions of the Good Book differ with translations. She spoke of anything with the authority of Moses.
The snowy egret has a black beak and yellow feet. The great egret has a yellow beak and black legs. I have a headache.
Hughes, never willing to let well enough alone, also says that in southern Florida there is an even larger egretlike bird named the great white heron, which has been found to be simply another phase of the great blue heron.
So, in southern Florida, you may be looking at a great white heron that is blue. Or vice versa.
``My advice is stay out of southern Florida,'' Hughes said.
by CNB