He has aimed at interesting all classes of mathematicians, has
introduced problems and discussions intelligible to scholars in our High
Schools, and has also published contributions to the highest departments
of the science. Educational questions have great prominence on the pages
of his journal; he gives frequent notes upon the best modes of teaching
the elementary branches, and proposes to publish in a serial form
treatises adapted to use in the school-room. Every number of the
"Monthly" contains five prize problems for students. Nor are its pages
confined to topics strictly mathematical. The number for February
introduces a problem by a quotation from Longfellow's "Hiawatha";
another gives a list of fifty-five of the Asteroid group, with their
orbits, and the circumstances of their discovery. The March number
explains an ingenious holocryptic cipher, written with the English
alphabet, with no more letters than would be required for ordinary
writing, yet so curiously complicated, that, while with the key easy to
understand, it is without the key absolutely undecipherible, even to the
inventor of the plan; and the key is capable of so many variations, that
every pair of correspondents in Christendom may have their own cipher
practically different from all others.
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