rifling play upon the nature and value of numbers. The first men of
antiquity indulged themselves in these fooleries" (p. 244). Mr. Higgins
points out that the old Welsh or British word for Stonehenge, namely
Emrys, signifies, according to Davies, 365; as do the words Mithra,
Neilos, etc.; that certain collections of the old Druidic stones at
Abury may be made to count 365; that "the famous Abraxas only meant the
solar period of 365 days, or the sun," etc. "It was all judicial
astrology.... It comes" (adds Mr. Higgins) "from the Druids."]

[Footnote 259: See this table in Professor Smyth's _Life and Work at the
Great Pyramid_, vol. ii. p. 458. The table professes to give some of Sir
Isaac Newton's data regarding the Sacred Cubit by changing the
measurements which Sir Isaac uses of the Roman foot and inch into
English inches. But all the figures and measurements are transferred
into English inches by a different rule from that which Sir Isaac
himself lays down--viz., that the English foot is 0.967 of the Roman
foot; and, consequently, _in every one of the instances given_ in Mr.
Smyth's table, the lengths in English inches of these data of Sir Isaac
Newton are assuredly _not_ their lengths in English inches as understood
and laid down by Newton himself.]

[Footnote 260: The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and
unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest
importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the
measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who
laid down its length as 25.68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor
Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24.91 English inches, and then
erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements
of Mersennus--viz., 24.91 and 25.68--not as _one_ identical quantity,
which they are--but as _two_ different and contrasting quantities; and
further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of
approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never,
perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical
and mathematical character.]

[Footnote 261: Thus, after deducing the length of the cubit of Memphis
from the length of the King's Chamber, Sir Isaac Newton observes:--"From
hence I would infer that the Sacred Cubit of Moses was equal to 25 unciae
of the Roman foot and 6/10 of an _uncia_." (See his _Dissertation on the
Sacred Cubit_, as republish