259 
of Edmburgk, Session 1867-68. 
Jews was not 25*07, as Professor Smyth makes him state, but 24*82 
British inches (or 25 uneise of the Roman foot, and of an uncia), 
as Sir Isaac himself more than once deliberately infers in his 
Dissertation. Besides, in such inquiries is it not illogical to 
attempt to draw mathematical deductions by these calculations of 
“ means,” and especially by using the ninth quantity in the table 
— viz., Sir Isaac’s own deliberate deduction regarding the actual 
length of the Sacred Cubit— as one of the nine quantities from which 
that length was to be deduced by the equivocal process of means ? 
Errors, however, of a still more serious kind exist. The “ mean ” 
of the nine quantities in Professor Smyth’s table is, he infers, 25*07 
inches ; and hence he avows that this, or near this figure, is the 
length of the Sacred Cubit. But the real mean of these nine 
quantities is not 25*07, but 25*29— a number in such a testing 
question as this of a very different value. For the days of the year 
(365*25) when multiplied by this — the true mean of these nine 
quantities — would make the base line of the pyramid 9237 inches, 
instead of Professor Smyth’s theoretical number of 9142 inches— 
a difference altogether overturning all his inferences and calcula- 
tions thereanent. 
The incidentally erroneous summation which Professor Smyth 
makes of the nine quantities in his table, as amounting to 25*07, he 
declares (to use his own strong words) as a “ really glorious consum- 
mation for the geodesical science of the present day to have brought 
to light;” for he avers this length of 25*07 — which he forthwith 
elects to alter to 25*025 British inches — being “practically the 
sacred Hebrew cubit, is exactly one ten-millionth (1-10, 000, 000th) 
of the earth’s semi-axis of rotation; and that is the very best mode of 
reference to the earth-ball as a whole, for a linear standard through 
all time, that the highest science of the existing age of the world 
has yet struck out, or can imagine. In a word, the Sacred Cubit, 
thus realised, forms an instance of the most advanced and perfected 
human science supporting the truest, purest, and most ancient 
religion ; while a linear standard which the chosen people in the 
earlier ages of the world were merely told by maxim to look on as 
sacred , compared with other cubits of other lengths, is proved by 
the progress of human learning in the latter ages of time, to have 
had, and still to have, a philosophical merit about it which no 
