Footnote 264: _Traite de la Grandeur et de la Figure de la Terre._
Amsterdam edition (1723), p. 195.]

[Footnote 265: _Tables Portatives de Logarithmes._ Paris, 1795, p. 100.]

[Footnote 266: The same idea of using the earth's axis as a standard of
length has been suggested also by Professor Hennessy of Dublin, and by
Sir John Herschel. See _Athenaeum_ for April 1860, pp. 581 and 617.]

[Footnote 267: The diameter of the earth in latitude 30 deg. is really about
20 miles longer than the polar axis. But Mr. Taylor obviously did not
know the nature of the spheroidal arcs of the meridian, and so falls
into the most inconsistent assertions respecting the length of this
particular diameter. Thus, in pp. 75 and 87, he asserts the diameter in
latitude 30 deg. to be 500,000,000 inches [that is = 7891.414 miles], which
is 7.756 miles _less_ than the polar axis--_the least_ diameter of all;
whereas, in p. 95, he states this diameter in lat. 30 deg. to be 17.652
miles _greater_ than the polar axis.]

[Footnote 268: "The diameter of the earth, according to the measures
taken at the Pyramids, is 41,666,667 English feet, or 500,000,000
inches." (See _The Great Pyramid_, p. 75.) "Dividing this number by
20,000,000 we obtain the measure of 25 (English) inches for the Sacred
Cubit" (p. 67).]

[Footnote 269: "When" (says Mr. Taylor, p. 91) "the _new_ Earth was
measured in Egypt after the Deluge, it was found that it exceeded the
diameter of the _old_ Earth by the difference between 497,664,000 inches
and 500,000,000 inches; that is, by 2,336,000 inches, equal to 36.868
miles."]

[Footnote 270: _Alleged Sacred Character of the Scottish Yard or Ell
Measure._--Professor Smyth tries to show (iii. 597), that if Britain
stands too low in his metrological testing of the European kingdoms and
races, its "low entry is due to accepting the yard for the country's
popular measure of length." But long ago the "divine" origin of the
Scottish ell--as in recent times the divine origin of the so-called
pyramidal cubit and inch--was pleaded rather strenuously. For when, in
the 13th century, Edward I. of England laid before Pope Boniface his
reasons for attaching the kingdom of Scotland to the Crown of England,
he maintained, among other arguments, the justice and legality of this
appropriation on the ground that his predecessor King Athelstane, after
subduing a rebellion in Scotland under the auspices of St. John of
Beverley, prayed that through the