The Battle of the Standards. By John Taylor. (Longman and
Co.)— Mr. Taylor ingeniously deduces the antiquity of our length measures from the structure and proportions of the pyramids, a theory which has received the approbation of Sir John Herschel. Thence it follows that our inch is nearly the five hundred-millionth of the earth's polar axis, and in the judgment of mathematicians the best standard of linear measure that could be attained. This, however, by no means decides the battle of the standards. The French system of weights and measures is inseparably united with their decimal system of notation, and the whole has now obtained so widely that it is hopeless to aim at uniformity except by the adoption of it. The nations who have conformed to the French system will not now consent to meet in congress and adopt the inch, so that we must conform too. Uniformity ef weights and measures throughout Europe is of far more importance than retaining what is in the abstract the best unit of linear measure. It is to be regretted that Mr. Taylor has mixed up a most ingenious and subtle argument with a quantity of nonsense about the revelations prior to that given to Moses. Why it is impossible that the Egyptians should have known the true dimensions of the earth without a revelation we cannot imagine, but Mr. Taylor says so.
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