262 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
diameter of the earth from Professor Smyth. The diameter of 
the earth at 30° of latitude — the geographical position of the 
Great Pyramid — is some seventeen miles, or more exactly 17’ 652 
miles, or above 1,100,000 inches, longer than at the poles. But 
Mr Taylor fixed upon this diameter of the earth at latitude 30° 
— and not, like Professor Smyth, upon its polar diameter — as the 
standard for the metrological linear measures of the Great Pyramid ; 
and yet, though the standard was so different, he found, like Mr 
Smyth, 500 millions of inches also in his axis, and 20 millions of 
cubits also.* The resulting figures appear to fit equally as well 
for the one as for the other. Perhaps they answer best on Mr 
Taylor’s scheme. For Mr Taylor maintained that the diameter 
of the earth before the Flood, at this selected point of 30°, was less 
by nearly 27 miles from what it was subsequently to the Flood, f 
and is now ; — a point by which he accounts for otherwise unaccount- 
able circumstances in the metrological doctrines which have been 
attempted to be connected with the Great Pyramid. For while Mr 
Taylor believes the Sacred Cubit to be 24‘88, or possibly 2P90 Bri- 
tish inches, he holds the new Pyramidal cubit to be 25 inches in 
full; and the Sacred and Pyramidal cubits to be different, there- 
fore, from each other, though both inspired. In explanation of this 
startling difference in two measures supposed to be equally of sacred \ 
* “ The diameter of the earth, according to the measures taken at the Pyra- 
mids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000 inches.” (See “ The Great 
Pyramid,” p. 75.) “ Dividing this number by 20 millions, we obtain the 
measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred Cubit’’ (p. 67). 
| “ When” (says Mr Taylor, p. 91) “ the new Earth was measured in Egypt 
after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the diameter of the old Earth 
by the difference between 497,664,000 inches and 500,000,000 inches ; that is, 
by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 26-868 miles.” 
I Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell Measure . — Professor 
Smyth tries to show (iii. 597), that if Britain stands too low in his metro- 
logical testing of the European kingdoms and races, its “ low entry is due to 
accepting the yard for the country’s popular measure of length.” But long 
ago the “divine” origin of the Scottish ell — as in recent times the divine 
origin of the so-called pyramidal cubit and inch — was pleaded rather strenu- 
ously. For when, in the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope 
Boniface his reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of 
England, he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of 
this appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after 
subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St John of Beverley, 
