these inferences and averments regarding the Sacred Cubit
being an exact segment of the polar axis disappear, when we find Sir
Isaac Newton's length of the Sacred Cubit is not, as Professor Smyth
elects it to be, 25.025 British inches; nor 25.07, as he incorrectly
calculated it to be from the mean of the nine quantities selected and
arranged in his table; nor 25.29, as is the actual mean of these nine
quantities in his table; but, "_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton's" own
reiterated statement and conclusion, 24.753. (See footnote, p. 245.) A
Sacred Cubit, according to Sir Isaac Newton's admeasurements of it, of
24.75 inches, would not, by thousands of cubits, be one ten-millionth of
the measure of the semi-polar axis of the earth; provided the polar axis
be, as Professor Smyth elects it to be, 500,500,000 British
inches.[263]

AXIS OF THE EARTH AS A STANDARD OF MEASURE.

The standards of measure in France and some other countries are, as is
well known, referred to divisions of arcs of the meridian, measured off
upon different points of the surface of the earth. These measures of
arcs of the meridian, as measurements of a known and selected portion of
the surface of the spheroidal globe of the earth, have, more or less,
fixed mathematical relations with the axis of the earth; as the
circumference of a sphere has an exact mathematical ratio to its
diameter. The difference in length of arcs of the meridian at different
parts of the earth's surface, in consequence of the spheroidal form of
the globe of the earth, has led to the idea that the polar diameter or
axis of the earth would form a more perfect and more universal standard
than measurements of the surface of the earth. In the last century,
Cassini[264] and Callet[265] proposed, on these grounds, that the polar
axis of the earth should be taken as the standard of measure. Without
having noticed these propositions of Cassini and Callet,[266] Professor
Smyth adopts the same idea, and avers that 4000 years ago it had been
adopted and used also by the builders of the Great Pyramid, who laid out
and measured off the basis of the pyramid as a multiple by the days of
the year of the Sacred Cubit, and hence of the Pyramidal Cubit while the
Sacred or Pyramidal Cubit were both the results of superhuman or divine
knowledge, and were both, or each, one ten-millionth of the semi-polar
axis of the earth. We have already seen, however, that the Sacred Cubit,
"_according_ to Sir Isa