If the wind comes before the rain,
Lower your topsails and hoist them again."

The expressions in the latter two are maritime, and the rhymes not very
choice; but they hold equally in terrestrial matters, and I have seldom
found them wrong.

RUBI.

_Dog Latin_.--The answer of one of your late correspondents (E. M. B., Vol.
vii., p. 622.) on the subject of "Latin--Latiner," has revived a Query in
your First Volume (p. 230.) as to the origin of this expression which does
not appear to have been answered. I do not remember having seen any
explanation of the term, but I have arrived at one for myself, and present
it to your readers for what it is worth. Nothing, it must be admitted, can
be more inconsistent with the usual forms of language than the Latin of
mediaeval periods; it is often, in fact, not Latin at all, but merely a
Latin form given to simple English or other words, and admitting of the
greatest variety. Now of all animals the distinctions of breed are perhaps
more numerous in the canine race than any other. The word "mongrel,"
originally applied to one of these quadruped combinations of variety, has
long been used to signify anything in which mixture of class existed,
especially of a debasing kind, to which such mixture generally tends.
Nothing could be more appropriate than the application of the term to the
"infima latinitas" of the Middle Ages; and from "mongrel" the transition to
the name of the genus from that of the degenerate species appears to me to
be very easy, though fanciful.

J. B--T.

_Thomas Wright of Durham_.--In the _Philosophical Magazine_ for April,
1848, I gave an account of the "Original Theory or new Hypothesis of the
Universe" of Thomas Wright, whose anticipations of modern speculation on
the milky way, the central sun, and some other points, make him one of the
most remarkable astronomical thinkers of his day. In the biography in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1793, he is described as struggling for a
livelihood when a young man, and no account is given of the manner in which
he obtained the handsome competence with which he emerges in 1756, or
thereabouts. A few days after my account was published, I was informed (by
Captain James, R.E.) that a large four-foot orrery, constructed by Wright
for the Royal Academy at Portsmouth, was still in that town; and that by
the title of "J. Harrises Use of the Globes" it appears that he (Wright)
kept his shop at the _Orrery_, near Water Lane,