694 PROF. C. P. SMYTH ON THE REPUTED METROLOGICAL SYSTEM 



sures, larger and smaller, and with the earth itself; yet without sensibl3% to the 

 people, altering its present absolute dimensions. 



The result of this arrangement tells with thrilling effect, on the last and most 

 scientific movement which the Government has made, for a grand Map of Great 

 Britain. It is hardly a dozen years since this new survey for a map was begun, 

 on the scale of ^^o^l^ of nature ; and there may be required 50 to 100 years for 

 its completion. It is a splendid map, the most accurate and perfect thing of the 

 kind ever attempted either in this or any other country ; but the only draw-back 

 is, that its scale of ^^10*^ of nature, is absolutely unconformable to any existing 

 legal British measures, either Linear or Square. In linear, it is a map of 25 344 

 inches British to the mile; and in square, of 1018 square British inch to the 

 acre : and these fractions are found so annoying to practical working men, — that 

 we recently heard an eminent Indian surveyor condemn the arrangement Avithout 

 mercy ; and prefer, if there must be an odd fraction anywhere, to have it in place 

 of the ^oyth, which only scientific men care about. Government seem in fact 

 to be in a rather awkward position : for, to please some few politico-scientific 

 men, they have adopted a scale for the national survey which is the annoy- 

 ance of all working men throughout the land ; and they do not like to alter back 

 again to please the working, and affront the political men. 



Yet see how the Great Pyramid system, if Government would only embrace it, 

 could relieve them of the difficulty in a moment : for the map can remain as it is, 

 viz., of the ^(Toth of nature, to please the said powerful agitators of the com- 

 munity ; and it will nevertheless be, in Pyramid linear measure, 25 inches, even, 

 to 1 mile; and in Pyramid square measure, 1 inch, even, to an acre; to the 

 immense satisfaction of the numbers who compose the large industrial part of 

 that community itself. 



In Heat measure, there is only occasion to remark, that the PjTamid system 

 gets rid of the generally confessed and unnatural anomaly as to the place of zero 

 in Fahrenheit's scale ; and allows working men to speak of winter temperatures, 

 in the way they find it most serviceable to speak of them, viz., as so many degrees 

 of frost or heat, whenever the temperature is below or above the freezing of water ; 

 agreeably with the — and -I- readings of scientific continental thermometers. At 

 the same time, the Pyramid scale, having a greater number of degrees between 

 freezing and boiling, than either Fahrenheit, Centigrade, or Reaumur, enables a 

 greater number of different temperatures to be alluded to, without the inconvenient 

 employment of fractions, than any other known scale. 



(10.) The Sacred Cubit of the Jews. 



The cubit is, by name, one of the earliest of all measures, and has been most 

 extensively employed by all the great nations of antiquity. As usually explained, 

 it is the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger, a space with 



