ar diameter, the inference would
be that, while the coincidence itself was merely accidental, their
measurement of a degree of latitude in their own country had been
singularly accurate. By an approximate calculation I find that, taking
the earth's compression at 1-300, the diameter of the earth, estimated
from the accurate measurement of a degree of latitude in the
neighbourhood of the great pyramid, would have made the sacred
cubit--taken at one 20,000,000th of the diameter--equal to 24.98 British
inches; a closer approximation than Professor Smyth's to the estimated
mean probable value of the sacred cubit.

[21] It is, however, almost impossible to mark any limits to what may be
regarded as evidence of design by a coincidence-hunter. I quote the
following from the late Professor De Morgan's _Budget of Paradoxes_.
Having mentioned that 7 occurs less frequently than any other digit in
the number expressing the ratio of circumference to diameter of a
circle, he proceeds: 'A correspondent of my friend Piazzi Smyth notices
that 3 is the number of most frequency, and that 3-1/7 is the nearest
approximation to it in simple digits. Professor Smyth, whose work on
Egypt is paradox of a very high order, backed by a great quantity of
useful labour, the results of which will be made available by those who
do not receive the paradoxes, is inclined to see confirmation for some
of his theory in these phenomena.' In passing, I may mention as the most
singular of these accidental digit relations which I have yet noticed,
that in the first 110 digits of the square root of 2, the number 7
occurs more than twice as often as either 5 or 9, which each occur eight
times, 1 and 2 occurring each nine times, and 7 occurring no less than
eighteen times.

[22] I have substituted this value in the article 'Astronomy,' of the
_British Encyclopaedia_, for the estimate formerly used, viz. 95,233,055
miles. But there is good reason for believing that the actual distance
is nearly 92,000,000 miles.

[23] It may be matched by other coincidences as remarkable and as little
the result of the operation of any natural law. For instance, the
following strange relation, introducing the dimensions of the sun
himself, nowhere, so far as I have yet seen, introduced among pyramid
relations, even by pyramidalists: 'If the plane of the ecliptic were a
true surface, and the sun were to commence rolling along that surface
towards the part of the earth's orbit whe