263 
of Edinburgh , Session 1867 - 68 . 
origin, Mr Taylor observes — “ The smaller (24*88) is the Sacred 
Cubit which measured the diameter of the Earth before the Flood ; 
the one by which Noah measured the Ark, as tradition says; and 
the one in accordance with which all the interior works of the Great 
Pyramid were constructed.* The larger (25) is the Sacred Cubit 
of the present Earth, according to the standard of the Great 
Pyramid when it was completed.” 
Surely such marked diversities and contradictions, and such 
strange hypothetical adjustments and re-adjustments of the data 
and calculations, entirely upset the groundless and extraordinary 
theory of the base of the pyramid being a standard of linear 
measurement ; or a segment of any particular axis of the earth ; 
or a standard for emitting a system of new inches and new cubits ; — 
seeing, on the one hand, more particularly, that the basis line of the 
pyramid is still itself an unknown and undetermined linear quantity, 
as is also the polar axis of the earth of which it is declared and 
averred to be an ascertained, determined, and measured segment. 
M. Pancton, in 1780, wrote a work in which he laid down the 
base side of the pyramid as 8754 inches ; maintained, like Mr 
Taylor and Mr Smyth, that this length was a standard of linear 
measures ; found it to be the measure of a portion of a degree of 
the meridian, such degree being itself the 360th part of a circle;— 
and apparently the calculations and figures answered as well as 
prayed that through the intervention of that saint, it “ might be granted to 
him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all future ages might 
be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to the King of England. His 
prayer was granted in this way : Standing in front of one of the rocks at 
Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword, and left a score which proved to 
be the precise length of an ell, and was adopted as the regulation test of that 
measure of length.” This legend of the “ miraculously created ell-wand stand- 
ard” was afterwards duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St 
John of Beverley. (See Burton’s “ History of Scotland,” ii. 319.) In the official 
account of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its per- 
formance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of Athel- 
stane’s sword. “ Extrahens gladium de vagina percussit in cilicem, quae adeo 
penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eadem hora lapis butirum 
esset, vel mollis glarea ; . . . et usque ad presentem diem, evidens signum 
patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata ; monumento tali evidenter 
cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante.” (Foedera, tom. i. pars ii. 771.) 
*Eslewhere (p. 45) Mr Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac Newton’s opinion that 
the working cubit by which the Pyramid was built was the cubit of Memphis. 
