COCKCROWING. The cock usually crows several times about midnight, and again about break of day. The latter time, because he then crows loudest, and his shrill clarion' is most use ful by summoning man to his labours, obtained the appellation of the cockcrowing emphatically, and by way of eminence ; though sometimes the distinctions of the lint and second cockcrowing are met with in Jewish and heathen writers (Bochart, vol. iii. p. I19). These times, and these names for them, were, no doubt, some of the most ancient divisions of the night adopted in the East, where the bird of dawning' is most probably indigenous. The latter dXocropocbcovia was retained even when artificial divisions of time were invented. In our Lord's time the Jews had evidently adopted the Greek and Roman division of the night into four periods, or watchings ; each consisting of three hours; the first beginning at six in the evening, 1p Trj Sevripcz OvXa9), Kat Jzt T73 rpirn OuXaq (Luke xii. 38); TET4T73 & ovxa.0 Tile ma-6s (Matt. xiv. 25 ; Mark vi. 48). These watches were either numbered first, second, third, and fourth, as now specified, or were called 41, uctromizzrzop, ciXceropoqzwv(tz, zrptd. These are all mentioned (Mark xiii. 35 ; Veget. Re iii. 8, ' In quatuor parses ad clepsydram sunt divisor vigiliw, ut non amplius quam tribus horis nocturnis, necesse est vigilare,' Censorin, de Die Natal. llepl cp. Terciprnu, vide Joseph. Antiq. xviii. 9, C. flip/
56. Sevrepav, Diod. Sic. 18. 40; Xen. Anab. iv. 1. 5).
It has been considered a contradiction that Mat thew (xxvi. 34) records our Lord to have said to Peter, irplp ciXerropa Owilnczaz, rpis cir apvnan whereas St. Mark. (xiv. 30) says, rptv Sis Om+ gat. But Matthew, giving only the general sense of the admonition (as also Luke xxii. 34; John xiii. 38), evidently alludes to that only which was customarily called the cockcrowing, but Mark, who wrote under Peter's inspection, more accu rately recording the very words, mentions the two cockcrowings (Wetstein on Mark xiv. 30; Scheuch zer, Phys. Sacr. on Mark xiii. 35 ; Whitby's Note on Matt. xxvi. 34). Air, in Mark, is for le 6evrIpov, and rpts is explained, semel iterumque, plus simplici vice, a certain for an uncertain num ber, as i Cor. xii. 28. So Eusth. ap. Selz/. lex. says r pis is for zroAAd,ae. Thus the seeming con tradiction, at least, between Mark and the other Evangelists is removed (Lightfoot, Hor. Ileb. ; Bynwus de ma,* Christi, ii. 6; Reland, Orat. de Gall. Cantu ; Altmann De Gallicin.; Bid Ani mad. ad J. G. Altmann ; Ansaldi Comment , the four last in Ugolini, Thesaur. vol. xxvii. Ven. 1763; Adam's Roman Antiq. Boyd's Ed. 269 ; Winer, Biblisches Real-Worterbuck, Leipzig, 1833, art. Hiihner).—J. K.