ties which Professor Smyth has collected is not 25.07 but 25.29--a
number in such a testing question as this of a very different value. For
the days of the year (365.25) when multiplied by this, the true mean of
these nine quantities, would make the base line of the pyramid 9237
inches instead of Professor Smyth's theoretical number of 9142 inches; a
difference altogether overturning all his inferences and calculations
thereanent. And again, if we take Sir Isaac Newton's own conclusion of
24.75, and multiply it by the days of the year, the pretended length of
the pyramid base comes out as low as 9039.

_Alleged "really glorious Consummation" in Geodesy._

The incidentally but totally erroneous summation which Professor Smyth
thus makes of the nine equivocal quantities in his table, as amounting
to 25.07, he declares (to use his own strong words) as a "_really
glorious consummation_ for the geodesical science of the present day to
have brought to light;" for he avers this length of 25.07--(which he
forthwith elects to alter and change, without any given reason whatever,
to 25.025 British inches)--being, he observes, "practically the sacred
Hebrew cubit, is _exactly_ one ten-millionth (1-10,000,000th) of the
earth's semi-axis of rotation; and _that is_ the very best mode of
reference to the earth-ball as a whole, for a linear standard through
all time, that the highest science of the existing age of the world has
yet struck out or can imagine. In a word, the Sacred Cubit, _thus_
realised, forms an instance of the most advanced and perfected human
science supporting the truest, purest, and most ancient religion; while
a linear standard which the chosen people in the earlier ages of the
world were merely told by maxim to look on as _sacred_, compared with
other cubits of other lengths, is proved by the progress of human
learning in the latter ages of time, to have had, and still to have, a
philosophical merit about it which no men or nations at the time it was
first produced, or within several thousand years thereof, could have
possibly thought of for themselves." Besides, adds he elsewhere, "an
_extraordinarily_[262] convenient length too, for man to handle and use
in the common affairs of life is the one ten-millionth of the earth's
semi-axis of rotation when it comes to be realised, for it is extremely
close to the ordinary human arm, or to the ordinary human pace in
walking, with a purpose to measure."

Of course all