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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1449, 8 October 1872, Page 2

The News of the World (English) is responsible for the following :- To commence business systematically at cockcrow is Jn'aiseworthy in the extreme, but to transact business when the cock insists on crowing during the whole day within earshot of the desk is a severe tax on both energies and patience. Some ill-conditioned bird in the neighborhood of Clerkenwell police-court has, it appears, la'ely taken to inteifcring with the course of justice, at that tribunal by incessantly crowing iu de fiance of the magistrate, even when his worship is delivering the most solemn and important decisions. The magistrate one day appealed to the police three times to discover and arrest the offender. So daring is this mysterious fowl that when an inspector of police rushed into court with the startling intelligence that "he had looked all over the neighborhood, hut had failed to discover the delinquent," and while the magistrate was stigmatizing the poclj: as "an intolerable nuisance," at that very moment, loud and clear, burst forth again a shrill crow curdling the blood and freezing the yery marrow in the bones of all present on the ot casiou. A policeman '? in private plothes" was immediately posted on duty on the top of the cells, but after a long and weary vigil descended with the disheartening news that he too had failed to discover the cock. For aught >ve know, at this very moment the cock pay he in custody, and if so, it will be for the law officers of the crown to decide what shall be done with him. They will, doubtless, study the pleadings, recorded by Rammertein, of the case of the cock who was tried at Basle, in 1474, for having laid an egg, and was then and there, in spite of the exertions of an able advocate, condemned to death, not as a cock, but a sorcoer pr devjl in the form of a cock, and was, with its egg, publicly and with much solemnity burned at the stake. The r~'*' •■■ - z -' "*■ -- ; • '■'■*"■

cock at Clerkenwell, fortunately for himself, lives in an age when we smile thvough our frowns even at murderers, and should the police succeed in detecting him, which is very doubtful, he may rest assured that his case will receive Mi Brace's most earnest consideration, and that although he may be as a matter of form condemned to death, his sentence will probably be commuted into "detention during her Majesty's pleasure " at the Zoological Gardens.