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The Venetians call these worms bissa, and quantities of them come into life in both the ports of Alexandria, in Egypt. These worms, which are a cubit long and sometimes more, and never thicker than your little finger, undermine the solidity of ships which lie too long at anchor. The Spanish sailors call this pest broma.

The saving of his own family was, however, a splendid monument of his life. The Ark. Noah built the ark according to the pattern given him by Jehovah. It was a sort of box-like boat 525 ft. long 87-1/2 ft. wide and 42-1/2 ft. deep, if we count a cubit at twenty-one inches. It was three stories high, and the building of it was a huge undertaking.

Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

"Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor none of his fellows might make him to eat, and little he drank; so that he waxed shorter by a cubit than he was, and the people could not know him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb.

The play upon the word was not absolutely a novelty to my ear, but it was good-natured, and I smiled again, and perhaps made a faint inclination, as much as to say, "I hear you, young gentlemen, but I do not forget that I am standing on my dignity, especially now since a new degree has added a moral cubit to my stature."

About two foot and a half below that gold plate, the three chains were fastened to three handles that were fixed to a large round lamp of most pure crystal, whose diameter was a cubit and a half, and opened about two hands' breadths o' top; by which open place a vessel of the same crystal, shaped somewhat like the lower part of a gourd-like limbec, or an urinal, was put at the bottom of the great lamp, with such a quantity of the afore-mentioned burning water, that the flame of the asbestine wick reached the centre of the great lamp.

If we had power to add cubit by cubit to our stature, we should have far to grow ere our head should strike the heavens; and in bearing meekly, and acting righteously, and living purely, we have room enough to expand: it will be long ere we have done all, and so our progress be stopped by striking the boundary.

In this island is also found the rhinoceros, an animal less than the elephant, but larger than the buffalo. It has a horn upon its nose, about a cubit in length; this horn is solid, and cleft through the middle, upon this may be seen white lines, representing the figure of a man.

The prisoners are still at the fishmonger’s house?” “Even so, Excellency.” “I go back with you. I must see this stranger with my own eyes. There must be no mistake.” Scodrus stared widely when he saw his master go out into the dark, for his only escort a black Carthaginian sailor with a dirk a cubit long. Democrates did not even ask for a lantern.

Smyth, indeed, believes that it was exactly equal to that proportion of the earth's polar diameter a view which would correspond with his theory that the architects of the Great Pyramid were assisted by divine inspiration; but what is certainly known about the sacred cubit, which contained twenty-five of these inches, corresponds better with the diameter which the Chaldæan astronomers, if they worked very carefully, would have deduced from observations made in their own country, on the supposition which they would naturally have made that the earth is a perfect globe, not compressed at the poles.