324 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
“ now it is so injured as to be, in the eyes of some passing travellers 
“ little better than a heap of stones.” And the essay then pro- 
ceeds, in the spirit of that statement, utterly to confound the true 
figure and peculiar structure of the Great Pyramid, with sundry 
mere rounded heaps of loose or soft material, sometimes having 
rude chambers inside them, and sometimes not, in various parts of 
the world. 
It may be quite true, that in one portion of my largest book, 
where I was anxious to let every side of the question appear in 
order, the above few quoted words are to be found. But are there 
not also pages, and pages, and pages giving much broader records 
of the other side of the question as well; giving my own experience, 
for instance, through months of patient observation, on the me- 
chanical excellence and conscientious performance of the masonry 
courses, both composing the Great Pyramid’s present faces and 
general body, and contributing towards one of its most important 
symbolizations ? 
How many times, too, have I not had exhibited before large 
public meetings, both in Edinburgh and various cities of Scotland, 
amongst other of my own photographs of the Great Pyramid, 
several which were specially adapted to display that astonishing 
regularity which extends, with a purpose, throughout each of the 
gigantic courses of squared, cemented, horizontal, hard masonry? 
And yet all this accumulated evidence of various kinds, in favour 
of an ancient excellence, is to be annihilated, — for what? For 
half a dozen words attributed to, merely “some passing travellers;” 
and the accounts of passing travellers at the Great Pyramid, are 
again and again shown, in the same book, to be almost always un- 
trustworthy and liable to gross mistake. 
Hence, it is quite clear that the damaging extract to the Great 
Pyramid, picked out of my book and printed as above, does not 
exhibit the general sense and total conclusion of my whole book 
on the particular point concerned, but rather the very opposite. 
And the superabundant literary acumen which induced a gentle- 
man to make so much use of the word extraordinary instead of 
extraordinarily in a minor and rather problematical case, has failed 
him totally on a grander occasion. 
