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 negative of this proposition. But, granting that it were so, and that the moon, in what is conventionally called the beginning 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 influence. 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.
ROCOCO.
(Vol. i., pp. 321. 356.)
This word is now receiving a curious illustration in this colony of French origin. Rococo—antiquated, old-fashioned—would seem to have become rococo itself; and in its place the negroes have adopted the word entêté, 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 "Entêté chapeau!" It was next applied to umbrellas of a
strange colour (the varieties of which are almost without number in this country of the sun); and it has now been extended to every article of wearing apparel of an unfashionable or peculiar shape. A negro woman, appearing with a blue umbrella, has been followed by half a dozen black boys with the cry of "Entêté parasol!" and in order to get rid of the annoyance she had to shut the umbrella and continue her way under the broiling sun. But the term is not always used in derision. A few days ago, a young girl of colour, dressed in the extreme of the fashion, was passing along, when some bystanders began to rally her with the word "Entêté." The girl, perceiving that she was the object of their notice, turned round, and in an attitude of conscious irreproachableness, retorted with the challenge in Creole French, "Qui entêté ça?" But the smiles with which she was greeted showed her (what she had already partly suspected) that their cries of "Entêté" were intended rather to compliment her on the style of her dress.
Henry H. Breen.