I shall be obliged to any correspondent of "N. & Q." who will point out the period at which the crescent became the standard of Mahometanism. Poets and romancers freely bestow it upon any time or scene in which Mussulmans are introduced; Sir Walter Scott mentions it in the _Talisman_, but after the strange liberties he has taken with Saladin and Richard, he becomes, on such a question, no higher authority than writers of meaner name. I cannot find it in the history of Mahomet, or in that of his immediate successors. The first time Michaud, in his fine _Histoire des Croisades_, speaks of it is in the reign of Mahomet II., which is many centuries after periods at which modern poets, and even historians, have named it as the antagonistic standard to the cross. The crescent is common upon the reverses of coins of the Eastern empire long before the Turkish conquest, and was, I have reason to believe, in some degree peculiar to the Sclave nations. Was it the standard of the Turks, as contradistinguished from other Saracens? or, was it adopted by Mahomet II. after his conquests of Constantinople and the eastern countries of Europe? I am aware that if this last idea be substantiated, it will make it much more modern than it is generally supposed to be, but our ideas of everything, Turkish were for so long a time mixed with the wonderful and the romantic, that we must not expect much correctness on such points. The Turks came into fearful contiguity with the West in the fifteenth century; Europe had as much to dread from them then as from the Russians now. This event and the art of printing were almost cotemporary, and the crescent has been presented to us as the symbol of Mahometanism ever since; but I much doubt it can be proved to have been so at a far remoter period. W. ROBSON. Stockwell. * * * * * Minor Queries. _The Hebrew Testament._--Having lately completed the above work, so as to be "ready for the press" without much delay, I should be glad before I resign the MS. to the hands of the printer, to have the advantage of the suggestions of those of your erudite readers who have made sacred criticism their study. MOSES MARGOLIOUTH. _Dr. Franklin._--I possess the following lines in the handwriting of Dr. Franklin, written in the year 1780. Can any of your readers tell me who was the author of them, and when and where they were first printed? "When Orpheus went down to the Regions below, Which men are forbidden to see; He tun'd up his Lyre, as historians show, To set his Euridice free. All Hell was astonish'd, a person so wise Should so rashly endanger his life, And venture so far! But how vast their surprise When they heard that he came for his wife.