of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 261 
axis of the earth should he taken as the standard of measure. 
Without having noticed these propositions of Cassini and 
Callet, Professor Smyth adopts the same idea, and avers that 
4000 years ago it had been adopted and used also by the 
builders of the Great Pyramid, who laid out and measured off the 
basis of the pyramid as a multiple by the days of the year of the 
Sacred Cubit, and hence of the pyramidal cubit; while the Sacred 
or Pyramidal Cubit were both the results of superhuman or divine 
knowledge, and were both, or each, one ten-millionth of the semi- 
polar axis of the earth. We have already seen, however, that the 
Sacred Cubit, according to Sir Isaac Newton, is not a multiple by 
the days of the year of the base line of the Great Pyramid, and is 
not one twenty- millionth of the polar axis of the earth, when that 
polar axis is laid down as measuring, according to the numbers 
elected by Professor Smyth, 500,500,000 British inches. 
But is there any valid reason whatever for fixing and determining, 
as an ascertained mathematical fact, the polar axis of the earth to be 
this very precise and exact measure, with its formidable tail of 
nothings ? None, except the supposed requirements or necessities of 
Professor Smyth’s pyramid metrological theory. The latest and most 
exact measurements are acknowledged to be those of Captain Clarke, 
who, on the doctrine of the earth being a spheroid of revolution, com- 
putes the polar axis to be 500,522,804 British inches ; or 500,482,296 
British inches, calculating it from the results of all the known arcs of 
meridian measures. If we grant that the Sacred Cubit could be allowed 
to be exactly 25-025 inches, which Sir Isaac Newton found it not to 
be ; and if we grant that the polar axis is exactly 500,500,000 Bri- 
tish inches, which Captain Clarke did not find it to be; then, certainly, 
as shown by Professor Smyth, there would be 20,000,000 of these 
supposititious pyramidal cubits, or 500,000,000 of the supposititious 
pyramidal inches in this supposititious polar axis of the earth. 
“ In so far, then” (writes Professor Smyth), “we have in the 5, with 
the many 0 ! s that follow, a pyramidally commensurable and sym- 
bolically appropriate unit for the earth’s axis of rotation.” But 
such adjustments have been made with as great apparent exacti- 
tude when entirely different earth-axes and quantities were taken. 
Thus, Mr John Taylor shows the inches, cubits, and axes to answer 
precisely, although he took as his standard a totally different 
