. The literary digest. t must not be forgotten that theeffort to make teaching interesting, which is its great characteris-tic in modern times, does not really lighten the burden on thechild. It makes learning easier, but it makes him learn more; itkeeps him always at it, and it steals from him those moments oftorpor and stupidity, of dreams and vacancy, in which his littlebrain used to take furtive snatches of repose. HOW FAR CAN WE TRUST OUR SENSES? in^ VERY one knows that our senses occasionally deceive us,-L-^ but few realize that in normal condition they habituallygive wrong indications,
. The literary digest. t must not be forgotten that theeffort to make teaching interesting, which is its great characteris-tic in modern times, does not really lighten the burden on thechild. It makes learning easier, but it makes him learn more; itkeeps him always at it, and it steals from him those moments oftorpor and stupidity, of dreams and vacancy, in which his littlebrain used to take furtive snatches of repose. HOW FAR CAN WE TRUST OUR SENSES? in^ VERY one knows that our senses occasionally deceive us,-L-^ but few realize that in normal condition they habituallygive wrong indications, in one respect at least: they do not indi-cate accurately the intensity of the force, whatever it may be,that excites the sense-organ. That is to say, of two lights, onethat is of double intensity does not seem twice as bright; of twosounds, one that is twice as loud as the other does not appear soto the ear. Scientists have long known this, and many effortshave been made to determine what the exact relation is between. CURVE OF LIGHT. the intensity of the exciting agent and that of the resulting sensa-tion. An account of recent experiments in this direction is givenin the Revue Scientifique (Paris, February 5) by M. Casslant. Ti-e question, we are told, has been taken up recently anew byM. Charles Henry, who has endeavored to solve it by trying aseries of experiments foreach sensation, representing their resultsgraphically by drawing a curve, such as those that are used toshow varying heights of barometer or thermometer for a series ofdays, and then deducing a mathematical law by a study of thesecurves. The method followed consisted in determining the in-tensity of the excitant corresponding to the smallest sensationperceived, then to increase this intensity, and to determine thedegrees of sensation produced. The principle difficulty in theexperiments consisted in measuring the intensity of the excitantwith sufficient exactitude. We give M. Henrys method for thesensation of si
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