This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1874 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter viii. why of that size? tf we grant, temporarily, for argument's sake, that the long rectangular box, lidless chest, or open granite coffer, in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid was intended by the precise, measured, amount of its cubic contents to typify, as Mr. Taylor has suggested, a grand and universal standard of capacity measure--can any reason in nature or science be shown, why it should have been made of that particular size and no other? In a later age the designer of such a vessel would have been hampered by custom or led by precedent; but in the primeval day of the foundation of the Great Pyramid, who was there then to control its architect; or from whom could that truly original genius have copied anything; or what was there to prevent his making the coffer of any size he pleased? Of Scientific References for Capacity Measure. The affair of the wherefore of the coffer's precise size is indeed a question of questions, for there is no ready explanation lying on the surface; and the subject, viewed as one of capacity and weight measure, is capable of such peculiar perfectionings and remarkable refinements, that we may have to dig extremely deep before discovering the real reason, if it is there. Not that modern nations have shown a very particular care for the teachings of science, or extensive acquaintance with nature either, in ordering for themselves the size of their several standards of capacity measure, having generally left this one standard to something like arbitrary fancy; and seeming even still to think the subject either a vulgar and publican matter, or one ruled altogether by their own more scientific proceedings in linear measure. Thus, the late eminent Francis Baily, in his report on the standard...