June 25. 1853.] 



NOTES AND QUEEIES. 



627 



ridan, John Home Tooke, Francis Burdett Jones," 

 &c. 



Perhaps the noble lord thought with Sterne in 

 Tristram Shandy, though the nexus is not easy to 

 discover, that " there is a strange kind of magic 

 bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose 

 upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he 

 had misread tliat controverted passage in Plautus 

 (Aulular. Act II. Sc. 4.) : 



" Tun' trium literarum homo 

 Me vituperas? Fur." 



The custom is now almost universal; and as, 

 according to Camden (Remaines, Sfc, p. 96.), 



" Shortly after the Conquest it seemed a disgrace for 

 a gentleman to have but one single name, as the meaner 

 sort and bastards had," 



SO now, the tria nomina nohiliorum have become 

 so common, as to render the epigram upon a 

 certain M. L-P. Saint- Florentin, of almost uni- 

 versal applicability as a" neat and befitting epitaph. 



" On ne lui avait pas epargne," says the biographer 

 of this gentleman (Biographie U/iiverselle, torn, xxxix, 

 p. 573.), " les epigrammes de son vivant ; il en parut 

 encore contra lui au moment de sa mort; en voici 

 une : — 



' Ci git un petit homme a Pair assez commun, 

 Ayant porte trois noms, et n'en laissant aucun.^ " 



William Bates. 

 Birmingham. 



Leopold William Finch, fifth son of Heneage, 

 second Earl of Nottingham, born about the year 

 1662, and afterwards Warden of All Souls, is an 

 earlier instance of an English person with two 

 Christian names than your correspondent J. J. H. 

 has noticed. J. B, 



WEATHEB BULES. 



(Vol. vii., p. 522.) 



Your correspondent J. A., Jun., makes a Note 

 and asks a question regarding a popular opinion 

 prevalent in Worcestershire, on the subject of a 

 " Sunday's moon," as being one very much addicted 

 to rain. In Sussex that bad repute attaches to 

 the moon that changes on Satui'day : 



" A Saturday's moon, 

 If it comes once in seven years, it comes too soon." 



It may be hoped that the time is not far distant 

 when a scientific meteorology will dissipate the 

 errors of the traditional code now ift existence. 

 Of these errors none have greater or more exten- 

 sive prevalence than the superstitions regarding 

 the influence of the moon on the atmospheric phe- 

 nomena of wet and dry weather. Howard, the 

 author of The Climate of London, after twenty 

 years of close observation, could not determine 



that the moon had any perceptible influence on 

 the weather. And the best authorities now follow, 

 still more decidedly, in the same train. 



" The change of the moon," the expression ia 

 general use in predictions of the weather, is idly 

 and inconsiderately used by educated people, with- 

 out considering that in every phase that planet is 

 the same to us, as a material agent, except as re- 

 gards the power of reflected light; and no one 

 supposes that moonlight produces wet or dry. 

 Why then should that point in the moon's course, 

 which we agree to call " the new " when it begins 

 to emerge from the sun's rays, have any influence 

 on our weather. Twice in each revolution, when 

 in conjunction with the sun at new, and in oppo- 

 sition at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be 

 supposed to exist, and to exert some sort of in- 

 fluence. But the existence of any atmospheric 

 tide at all is denied by some naturalists, and is 

 at most very problematical ; and the absence of 

 regular diurnal fluctuations of the barometric 

 pressure favours the negative of this proposition. 

 But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, 

 in what is conventionally called the begifining of 

 its course, and again in the middle, at the 'full, did 

 produce changes in the weather, surely the most 

 sanguine of rational lunarians would discard the 

 idea of one moon differing from another, except in 

 relation to the season of the year ; or that a new 

 moon on the Sabbath day, whether Jewish or 

 Christian, had any special quality not shared by 

 the new moons of any other days of the week. 



Such a publication as "N. & Q." is not the 

 place to discuss fully the question of lunar influ- 

 ence. Your correspondent J. A., Jun., and all 

 persons who have inconsiderately taken up the 

 popular belief in moon-weather, will do well to 

 consult an interesting article on this subject (I 

 believe attributed to Sir D. Brewster) in The 

 Monthly Chronicle for 1838; and this will also 

 refer such inquirers to Arago's Annuaire for 1833. 

 There may be later and completer disquisitions on 

 the lunar influences, but they are not known to 

 me. M. 



(Vol. i., pp. 321. 356.) 



This word is now receiving a curious illustration 

 in this colony of French origin. Rococo — anti- 

 quated, old-fashioned — would seem to have become 

 rococo itself; and in its place the negroes have 

 adopted the word entete, wilful, headstrong, to 

 express, as it were, the persistence of a person in 

 retaining anything that has gone out of fashion. 

 This term was first applied to white hats ; and the 

 wearers of such have been assailed from every 

 corner of the streets with the cry of " Entete 

 chapeau ! " It was next applied to xuubrellas of a. 



