[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 Athenæum for April 1860, pp. 581 and 617.
[267] The diameter of the earth in latitude 30° 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° 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° to be 17·652 miles greater than the polar axis.
[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).
[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."
[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 intervention of that saint, it "might be granted to him to receive a visible and tangible token by which all future ages might be assured that the Scots were rightfully subject to the King of England. His prayer was granted in this way: Standing in front of one of the rocks at Dunbar, he made a cut at it with his sword, and left a score which proved to be the precise length of an ell, and was adopted as the regulation test of that measure of length." This legend of the "miraculously created ellwand standard" was afterwards duly attested by a weekly service in the Church of St. John of Beverley. (See Burton's History of Scotland, ii. 319.) In the official account of the miracle, as cited by Rymer, it is declared that during its performance the rock cut like butter or soft mud under the stroke of Athelstane's sword. "Extrahens gladium de vaginâ percussit in cilicem, quæ adeo penetrabilis, Dei virtute agente, fuit gladio, quasi eâdem horâ lapis butirum esset, vel mollis glarea; ... et usque ad presentem diem, evidens signum patet, quod Scoti, ab Anglis devicti ac subjugata; monumento tali evidenter cunctis adeuntibus demonstrante." (Foedera, tom. i. pars ii. 771.)
[271] Elsewhere (p. 45) Mr. Taylor corroborates Sir Isaac Newton's opinion that the working cubit by which the Pyramid was built was the cubit of Memphis.
[272] The interior of any Scottish cottage, where the inside of the thatched or slated roof is left exposed by uncovered joists within, contains, on the same principle, six sides, and a seventh or the floor.
[273] "The clue was not prepared for any immediate successors of the builders, but was intended, on the contrary, to endure to a most remote period. And it has so endured and served such a purpose even down to those our own days." (Professor Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid, vol. i. p. 157.) "The builders, or planners rather, of the Great Pyramid, did not leave their building without sure testimony to its chief secret; for there, before the eyes of all men for ages, had existed these two diagonal joints in the passage floor, pointing directly and constantly to what was concealed in the roof just opposite them, and no one ever thought of it. Practically, then, we may say with full certainty that these two floor marks were left there to guide men who, it was expected, would come subsequently, earnestly desiring, on rightly-informed principles, to look for the entrance to the upper parts of the Pyramid." (Vol. i. p. 156-7.) At p. 270 Professor Smyth again alludes to this supposed mark, made up by two diagonal joints in the passage floor, as evading the notice of all visitors, except "those very few, or perhaps even that one only man, who had been previously instructed to look for a certain almost microscopic mark on the floor."