(2.) _Discordance between its actual and its theoretical measure._--Professor Smyth holds that _theoretically_ its capacity ought to be 71,250 "pyramidal" cubic inches, for that cubic size would make it the exact measure for a chaldron, or practically the vessel would then contain exactly four quarters of wheat, etc. Yet Professor Smyth himself found it some 60 cubic inches less than this; while also the measurements of Professor Greaves, one of the most accurate measurers of all, make it 250 cubic inches, and those of Dr. Whitman 14,000 _below_ this professed standard. On the other hand, the measurements of Colonel Howard Vyse make it more than 100, those of Dr. Wilson more than 500, and those of the French academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, about 6000 cubic inches _above_ the theoretical size which Professor Smyth has latterly fixed on. * * * * * (3.) _Its theoretical measure varied._--The _actual_ measure of the coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers. But even its _theoretical_ measure is varied also; for the size which the old coffer really _ought_ to have as "a grand capacity standard," is, strangely enough, not a determined quantity. In his last work (1867), Professor Smyth declares, as just stated, its proper theoretical cubic capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches. But in his first work (1864), he declared something different, for "we _elect_," says he, "to take 70,970.2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 pyramidal cubic inches) as the true, because the theoretically _proved_ contents of the porphyry coffer, and therefore accept these numbers as giving the cubic size of the grand _standard_ measure of capacity in the Great Pyramid." Again, however, Mr. Taylor, who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the ancient cubit of Karnak.[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard. But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 71,328, it is quite equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth that the Sacred Laver of the Israelites, and the Molten Sea of the Scriptures, also conform and correspond to its (yet undetermined) standard "with _all_ conceivable practical exactness;" though the standard of capacity to which they thus conform and correspond is itself a size or standard which has not been yet fixed with any exactness. Professor Smyth, in speaking of the calculations and theoretical dimensions of this coffer--as published by Mr. Jopling, a believer in its wonderful standard character--critically and correctly observes, "Some very astonishing results were brought out