366 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Fkh. 24, 1»82. 



THE RAINBAND.* 



EVEHYONK who notes a baromctiT's indications, uixl 

 I'lircfiilly coinjiuii's tlicni with tlic woathfr, knows 

 that thr liuroniftcr is liut an unsutisfuctory wrathi-r 

 ^uiih'. There in pitiniiKe, however, that witli an ally 

 apiMirently in.si^niticant (t-ertainly insi^^iilicant in si/.e and 

 ex|K>nso), wc may lie aMe to jiredirt tlm eoniing of wet 

 weatlr r with i()nsi<U'raI)le certainly. A iiock(!t spi<.trr>. 

 seujie, directed to any part of the sky, not too near the 

 huri/.on, will show the jiresence or absence of the rain- 

 Imnd (which Prof. Piazzi Smyth may he said to have dis- 

 covered, since he first directed attention to its im- 

 jiortunce) ; t and so will often tell us of the approadi of 

 rainy weather not indicated liy the liuromcter, or that 

 when the barometer jwiints to rainy tlie weather will in 

 reality be dry. The strength or faintness of this liaiid 

 in the spectrum indicates, in fact, the excess or deficiency 

 of atpieous vapour in the air as compared with the average. 

 AVith a little jnactice in the use of one of the rain- 

 Iwind spectroscopes advertised in our columns, assisted by 

 study of the little panipldet before us (which ilr. i5rowning 

 supplies v.ith his pocket spectroscopes for rainbow study), 

 an Englishman may bi>conie so independent of his umbrella, 

 when it is not going to rain, that his best Continental or 

 American frienils would not recotfiiise him. 



THE GREAT PYRAMID. 



liv THE Editor. 



I HAVE prepared two views of the Pyramid regarded as 

 a structure for observation, but as there is great pres- 

 sure this week on our space, and these views will occupy 

 nearly a full page, it has seemed well to defer that part of 

 iny subject to the week after next. I take tlie opportunity 

 to discuss, as I promised several weeks ago, the curious 

 coincidences -which many have regarded as demonstrating 

 wliat may be called the divine-inspiration theory of the 

 Pyramid. 



With the discovery that the base of the Pyramid is 

 several feet shorter than had been supposed, a number of 

 relations supposed to connect the Great Pyramid with 

 astronomy go overboard at a single stroke. I had written 

 a paper showing how singular these relations are, but at 

 the same time how obviously they result from mere coin- 

 cidence ; and now, alas .' (another strange coincidence ?) 

 the relations themselves disappear, and my remarks upon 

 them have no longer any weight. Still, the coincidences 

 are there. Indeed, it only requires that the Pyramid inch 

 should be slightly altered for the relations to be all once 

 more perfectly fulfilled. What will lie done with the 

 arguments showing the true Pyramid inch to be almost 

 e.\actly the same as the British inch, and the true cubit to 

 be twenty five of these inches, I do not know ; but past 



• " A Plea for tho Rainband." By J. Rand Capron. 



t Mr. Capron, in mentioninf; that Prof. Smyth has made himself 

 owner of three parts of the rainband, falls into a somewhat amusinp 

 mistake about certain lines which may belong, possibly, to the 

 nursirj- rhymes of the future, and, therefore, must be carefully 

 Kimnled from change. He says that in university rhymes. Mr. 

 UK-kyer is said to have " made himself owner of Iml'f the corona j " 

 whereas, in the original rhymes, written along with mnny others 

 during the eclipse expedition of 1H70- at which time Mr. Lockyer 

 Nnpposed the now abandoned theory of the corona to be unqucslion- 

 nbly sound— the words were, " ' Of the solar corona,' soys he (I,.), 

 'I'm the owner.'" This will lie of use to antii|U.irians of the 

 future ; just an those of our own day are enlightened by the reionl 

 showing tho real liistorj- of little .luck Horner, and the real nature 

 of the plum he so deftly ab.«tractcd. 



experience shows that whatever the precise value of the 

 I'yramid inch, a.s deduced from these new measures, may 

 prove to lie, will be shown to U- just the value which 

 corresponds most perfectly with what may tie called the 

 Pyramid religion. So, aft<-r all, my article may come in 

 well enough. However, I am not so jiarticularly fond of 

 demolishing giants of straw that, when the straw stulfing 

 has been ruthlessly jiulled out, I should persist in my 

 attack. So I will here pre-sent now very briefly what I 

 had before advamed at some length :- 



We find that while the Pyramid fulfils closely the rela- 

 tion which Jlerodotus says it was intended to fulfil, each 

 slant face being ei|ual in area to the square of the height, 

 it al.so very nearly fidfils what Taylor tells us was the 

 real puqwse of the Viuilder, the height being nearly equal 

 .to the radius of a circle having a circumference equal to 

 the perimeter of the s<|uare base ; and again, it almost as 

 closely fulfils another relation, in having the slant at the 

 edge very nearly as y vertically to 10 horizontally. Now, to 

 the ignorant, it seems as though the close approximation of 

 the building's proportions to these three relations, proves 

 demonstrably the mathematical skill of the builders, if not 

 their divine inspiration. As a matter of fact, however, we 

 see from the co-ex i-stence of these three relations, any one 

 of which might as well as another be the real one which 

 the builders had in view (were it not certain from what 

 Herodotus tells us, that the first only was their 

 building rule), how easy it is to find such relations if we 

 only look carefully for them, for two out of the three are 

 certainly accidental. So that apart from the evidence of 

 Herodotus, we should be free to reject all three, on the 

 sound plea that since coincidence can so readily be detected, 

 no reliance can be placed upon any argument from infrr 

 coincidence. 



Then, again, according to the measurements just nega- 

 tived, there were exactly as many cubits of L'-'i inches in each 

 side as there are days in the year, or '.iGJy2i inches in the 

 circuit of the base. One would have said that if this were 

 really proved, and if the height were determined by any 

 one of the three geometrical rules just indicated, all the 

 dimensions of the Great Pyramid, as a whole, were deter- 

 mined once for all. But even in the early days of the 

 Pyramid religion, the Pyramidalists were not content with 

 this. They found that the two diagonals of the square 

 base together contained as many inches as there are years in 

 the Great Precessional Period, and that the height contained 

 as many inches as there are in the one thousand millionth 

 part of the sun's distance ; though, of course, if these 

 relations really hold, they indicate coincidences, and very 

 singular ones too, entirely outside of the Pyramid. As 

 thus : Take one-fourth the number of days in the yeai', and 

 double the square of this number ; the stiuare root of the 

 product equals half the number of years in the Great Pre- 

 cessional Period. And again, take 100 times the number 

 of days in the year, and reduce the number thus 

 obtained in the same ratio that the radius is less 

 than the circumference of a circle ; you will then 

 have a number equal to the number of inches which 

 there are in one thousand millionth part of the sun's 

 distance. These two relations exist quite independently 

 of the Pyramid, and, so seen, even Pyramidalists must 

 admit that they are but singular numerical coincidences. 

 They have not a particle of real significance, anj' more thau 

 this one, which I make Pyramidal (by a very transparent 

 device) merely to show how easy it is to work such tilings : 

 — Take the s(|uare base of the Pyramid, and divide each 

 side into as many parts as the Pyramid has faces. Join 

 the corresponding divisions of opposite sides of the base so 

 that the base is divided into sixteen s<iuares. In each of 



