88 Desultory Remarks on Academic and 



student. The works of Simpson, Hutton, Barlow, Gregory, 

 &c. are quite familiar to the self-taught student ; their names to 

 him are like household deities. Non-academic students have 

 long regarded the works that have emanated from the Royal 

 Military Academy as their text-books ; so that the academy 

 has been a national one in every wide application of the term. 

 The professors still maintain with becoming credit the cele- 

 brity of the establishment: the three gentlemen who have un- 

 dertaken the editorship of The Mathematician are well qualified 

 to maintain and increase it. Two numbers of the periodical 

 have been published ; it is exclusively mathematical ; it is in- 

 tended to supply the place of Leybourne's Mathematical Re- 

 pository ; the essays by the editors and others of kindred talents 

 are of the most masterly description. The Mathematician is 

 adapted for the higher order of students, but every lover of 

 mathematics will find it a gem of the first water ; it deserves 

 public support, and there can be no doubt of its obtaining ex- 

 tensive circulation. 



"With regard to mathematical questions, the editors, in their 

 prospectus, having adverted to the Mathematical Repository, 

 say, ** It is our intention to curtail in some degree the depart- 

 ment of mathematical questions, for though we are fully im- 

 pressed with a sense of the importance of this feature of the 

 work, universal experience shows the difficulty of forming a 

 sufficient number of new and good questions where a fixed 

 number must be made up by a given time ; and the insertion 

 of such as lead to mere petty details of calculation and deduc- 

 tion, suited only for the student's private exercise, tends not 

 only to lead him into frivolous researches, but to create a false 

 taste in science. We shall hence insert only such as involve 

 some new principle, or require for their solution some new 

 modes of investigation, such as either lead to results remark- 

 able for their unexpected simplicity, elegance and symmetry, 

 or tend to the extension of an old or to the commencement of 

 a new and valuable course of inquiry. These and these only 

 will find a place in the present work ; and as we do not con- 

 fine ourselves to any exact number of questions or our corre- 

 spondents to the time when they transmit their answers (lea- 

 ving this to their own convenience), we hope to render this de- 

 partment free from the reproach so often applied to works of 

 this class, that o^^ creating a race qf mere problem-solvers.^ " 



It is obvious from this quotation that the editors intend their 

 publication for the higher order of mathematicians. Their 

 prescribed kind of questions can only be expected from expe- 

 rienced men ; their rule is so stringent that it forms a prohi- 

 bition to all juniors. Mathematicians, in their very neat pub- 



