of Edinburgh, Session 1867 - 68 . 
347 
Libel Second. 
Yet, Sir, however far from the accuracy compassable by employ- 
ing methods 1, 2, and 3, simultaneously , may be Messrs Aiton and 
Inglis’ measures, made on the strengtli of method 1 alone, — they 
are vastly above anything that can be done in the present 
ruinous and rubbish encumbered state of the outside of the Great 
Pyramid, without the assistance of that No. 1. 
After once, therefore, having obtained, from any observers, any 
socket measures of the base-sides, I have deemed it waste of time 
to try to get the true base-side length from any older measures 
taken by observers who had no view of the sockets to guide them ; 
and I have condemned my own attempts as well as those of others 
irretrievably, when taken under such impossible circumstances for 
accuracy. Those ante-socket measures were well enough in their day, 
as the only approximations then procurable ; but their day closed 
the moment that the vastly better approximations, caused by any 
sort of measurings from socket to socket, had been obtained. 
Not a little surprised, therefore, am I to find in a paragraph ex- 
tending from p. 255 to p. 256, that the Proceedings author, after 
having begun to deal with socket measures, goes back to some 
ante-socket measures, or the rudest possible approximation of mine, 
taken merely to check a rumour that two of the Pyramid basis 
sides were 1000 or 2000 inches longer than the other two ; and he 
enters into a long argument as to whether I am not egregiously 
wrong in applying to them a correction for a double thickness 
of casing-stones, less by the comparatively insignificant quantity of 
14 inches, than what he would have applied. 
1 shall not go into that argument at all on the present occasion, 
or attempt to refute one chief insinuation involved, viz., that that 
rude approximation is a sample of what my best measuring for final 
purposes would be ; because — first , 1 have allowed that my rude 
observation to be corrected, may be in itself erroneous by many 
times the amount of 14 inches; second , I have nothing final founded 
on it, having positively rejected the whole affair, observation, cor- 
rections, and all, as unworthy of being looked to for a moment, as 
unworthy of “any attention” for the theory, since Messrs Aiton 
and Inglis’ socket observations were procured : as may be seen in 
