Chuckie Hunter, age 13, of Hemingway, S.C., for his question:

WHO CLASSIFIED THE PLANTS AND ANIMALS?

Beans and bears have different common names in different languages. So do all the other familiar and unfamiliar plants and animals. When international experts wish to compare notes, this sort of thing could cause complete confusion. Fortunately the problem was solved about two centuries ago. Every plant and animal has its own worldwide scientific name and classification.

This worldwide system was invented by Karl von Linne, born in Sweden in 1707. Young Karl was a nature lover, always interested in collecting plants and making notes with diagrams. As a student, he went to medical school. There he became interested in animal life, though he continued his studies of botany.

With such a broad range of studies, he realized the need to sort, classify and name the different plants. He also saw the need for scientific names that could be used by experts of all languages. During his adult years, he taught and lectured at many major schools and colleges throughout Europe. Meantime he worked on his plan to classify the plant world.

In those days, science material was written in Latin, a dead language known to scholars of all countries. It also was usual for a science writer to Latinize his name. So Karl von Linne became Carolus Linnaeus. And nowadays, because he turned out to be one of history's great scientists, we refer to him as Linnaeus.

During his busy lifetime of 71 years, Linnaeus became famous and his system of plant classification was adopted by scholars of all nations. His system sorted similar plants into large groups called phyla. Each phylum was sorted into smaller and smaller groups of more closely related plants. In his last publication he used the same system to classify the animal kingdom.

Many more plants and animals have been discovered since the days of Linnaeus. But his system of classification needed few changes to make room for them all. Every plant and animal has its own scientific name, giving its species and genus group. A genus belongs in a family, in a larger order and a still larger class. And a group of classes make up a whopping group called a phylum.