430 A Century of Science 



The lucubrations of Piazzi Smyth, like those 

 of Miss Delia Bacon, called into existence a con- 

 siderable quantity of eccentric literature. For 

 example, there is Skinner's " Key to the Hebrew- 

 Egyptian Mystery in the Source of Measures ori- 

 ginating the British Inch and the Ancient Cubit," 

 published in Cincinnati in 1875, a tall octavo of 

 324 pages, bristling with diagrams and decimals, 

 Hebrew words and logarithms. The book begins 

 by getting the circle neatly squared, and then goes 

 on to aver that sundry crosses, including the Chris- 

 tian cross, are an emblematic display of the origin 

 of measures. The " mound-builders " come in for 

 a share of the author's attention ; for the mounds 

 are " alike Typhonic emblems with the pyramid of 

 Egypt and with Hebrew symbols." A Typhonic 

 emblem relates to Typhon, the " lord of sepulture," 

 whose Egyptian representative was the crocodile, 

 as his Hebrew representative was the hog ; " exem- 

 plified in the Christian books by the devil leaving 

 the man and passing into the herd of swine, which 

 thereupon rushed into the sea, another emblem of 

 Typhon." Yet another such emblem is a mound in 

 Ohio which simulates the contour of an alligator. 

 A certain Aztec pyramid, described by Humboldt, 

 has 318 niches, apparently in allusion to the days 

 of the old Mexican civil calendar. Mr. Skinner 



