Bro. Benedict, of Michigan, sends me a clipping from the Chicago American, in which a correspondent of that paper, writing from Milwaukee, Wis., gets off the following piece of ancient history:

      While reading in the American of the dramatization of the story of the Saviour's betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion, I was reminded of the not very widely known fact--somewhat curious, though not at all important--that there were no "cock crowings" in Jerusalem on that eventful night, as, by a religious law of the Jews, all cocks were banished from the city during [384] the celebration of the feast of the Passover. The blowing of a trumpet at the changing of the Roman military watch at midnight and at 3 o'clock A. M., were called, respectively by the Jews the first and second "cock crowings." And the Biblical statement, "And immediately the cock crew," probably means that just at that time (midnight) the watch was being changed and the sound of the trumpet was heard.

H. A. BUSHNELL.      

      Mr. Bushnell does not tell us where he found this piece of information about the banishment of cocks. I suppose he found it in the same chapter and the next verse after that which says that all sapheads who wrote for newspapers were hanged before the Passover began. If they had been, and the breed thus extirpated, it would have saved modern newspaper readers some waste of time. But then those Jews who were such sapheads as to take the blowing of a trumpet for the crowing of a cock, ought to have been hanged with the correspondents. The fool-killer must have been out of place just at that time. Peter must have been one of the unfortunates, for he took the blowing of the trumpet to be the crowing of a cock, and went out and wept bitterly. He ought to have butted out his brains, if he had any, against the first stone wall. But may it not be possible that when the order was issued for all the cocks to leave town, one old rooster, not being notified, stuck to his roost and crowed after the old fashion?

      What will be the next piece of nonsense which unbelievers will hatch out with which to pelt the Bible? Mr. Bushnell will have to try his hand again.

[SEBC 384-385]