365 
of Edinburgh, Session 1867-68. 
cording to him, “ many small objects, when thus multiplied suffi- 
“ ciently, give equally startling strings of 0’s and he then goes 
on to furnish three such examples ; the first being made gratuitously 
shown that he had most confidence in his two last determinations ; but his 
first, by its very wide limits, shows that it is by far the least trustworthy of 
all. Some decrease of weight, therefore, for No 1, and increase for Nos. 6 
and 7, require to be made. How much precisely, it is impossible to say : but 
perhaps | for the former, and 3 for each of the two latter, the intermediate 
quantities being reckoned at 1 each, — may be considered fair and probable. 
In which case the mean comes out, 25*05 British inches. 
While, simply, — and in fact as I did on the first occasion, using then a 
slightly different value of the Roman uncia, — throwing away the one very 
objectionable observation, and taking a mean of the rest, unweighted, gives 
25*09 of the same inches. 
But neither 25-09, nor 25-05 are fully safe, either in the second, or per- 
haps the first, place of decimals; — for— besides the uncertainty connected 
with the proper weighting of each of the results, according to the different 
kind of documentary evidence obtained by Sir Isaac Newton on each 
occasion, — there is considerable uncertainty in the value of a Koman uncia, 
expressed in British inches. We have assumed as above, that the former 
— 0-97 of the latter : but modern scientific and architectural authorities are 
found anywhere, between Zach at 0-9681 and Penrose at 0-97286 ; and might 
require us to reduce our final quantities by — -05, or increase them by + -06 
of an inch ; or by any intermediate figure. 
Wherefore, the statement already printed at p. 458 of vol. ii. of Life and 
Work at the Great Pyramid,— i.e. 25-07 =i= -10 British inches, for the best 
result deducible from all Sir Isaac Newton’s approved approximations for 
the length of the Sacred Cubit of the Hebrews, — is, if not as good a 
statement as can be made. — at least a great deal better than the 24-82 
inches, absolute, which has been hitherto current in most English works ; and 
beyond comparison better than the 207 inches, nearly, of the ORDNANCE 
SURVEY Map of Jerusalem. 
This Ordnance quantity of 20-7 inches is evidently not the sacred cubit at 
all, but the profane cubit; and in the explanations of the scale at the foot of 
the above map, the revered names of “ Sacred,” and “Cubit of the Taber- 
nacle,” are given to precisely what Moses was so anxious to keep them from 
being confounded with — viz., the cubits of idolatrous Egypt and other Gentile 
nations ; the inscriptions at one end of one of the Ordnance-map scale-lines 
being — “ Egyptian , Hebrew , Babylonian ,” and at the other end of one and the 
same line — “ Royal or Sacred Cubits , also named Cubits of the Tabernacle." 
If this map is one of those prepared, as believed by some, at the expense and 
to the orders of the Fathers of the Palestine Exploration Association — such 
a radical error with regard to the sacred cubit of the Hebrews may well excite 
surprise. But if, on the contrary, the map is purely the work of the several 
Ordnance officers whose names are conspicuously engraved upon it — the 
nation must regret that they should have so entirely ignored the researches 
of Sir Isaac Newton, the greatest philosopher their country ever produced, and 
in one of the most important of all questions that have ever been brought 
forward in either the science or history of metrical standards. 
