(_Biographie Universelle_, tom. xxxix. p. 573.), "les epigrammes de son
vivant; il en parut encore contre lui au moment de sa mort; en voici
une:--

'Ci git un petit homme a l'air 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.

* * * * *

WEATHER RULES.

(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 Saturday:

"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 in
existence. Of these errors none have greater or more extensive prevalence
than the superstitions regarding the influence of the moon on the
atmospheric phenomena 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 in general use in predictions of
the weather, is idly and inconsiderately used by educated people, without
considering that in every phase that planet is the same to us, as a
material agent, except as regards 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 opposition
at the full, an atmospheric spring-tide may be supposed to exist, and to
exert some sort of influence. 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 ne