So many excellent things have been constantly slipping by us for which there was no room in the pages of The Monthly—so many sterling papers which our readers would prize, and have often called for—that we find ourselves now compelled to resort to the issue of supplements in order to accomplish the purpose at first had in view. The volumes that we have thus far furnished undoubtedly contain the largest amount of varied and valuable mental work to be found within equal limits in any periodical of any country, and we now intend to increase its scope and influence by the help of these supplementary issues, so as to meet the augmenting requirements of the times, and make this publication the completest reflection of the scientific and philosophic progress of the age that can be anywhere obtained. It will represent the course of contemporary thought on subjects of leading interest, preserve its most permanent elements, and form a comprehensive and independent scientific library, well suited to the wants of non-scientific people.
During the ensuing year The Popular Science Supplements will appear once a month, containing, each, ninety-six pages, price twenty-five cents; and they will contain the freshest and most important articles that appear abroad, of the same general character as the past contents of The Popular Science Monthly. Objection has sometimes been made that The Monthly is high-priced, but it has been furnished as cheaply as the nature of the enterprise would allow. There is no maxim of trade more sound and practical than that value must be paid for, and that the lowest-priced goods are always the poorest, and but rarely the cheapest. Quality should certainly be taken into account in our mental nutriment if anywhere, and The Popular Science Monthly and its Supplements will furnish the cheapest first-class reading in the United States.
JEVONS ON "CRAM."
Prof. Jevons has contributed an article to Mind (copied into The Popular Science Supplement, No. 1), in which he attempts a defense of "cram" in connection with the system of competitive examinations. Such is the working of that system, and so inevitably does it lead to cramming, that it is not difficult to see either that the system must be abandoned or "cram" defended; and Prof. Jevons intrepidly takes the latter alternative. We admire his pluck but condemn his logic. Clear thinker as he is, in this brilliant and specious paper he has simply confused an important subject in the interest of a questionable cause.
He makes his case by drawing a distinction between two sorts of "cram," which he calls "good cram" and "bad cram." He says: "A candidate, preparing for an important competitive examination, may put himself under a tutor well skilled in preparing for that examination. The tutor looks for success by carefully directing the candidate's studies into the most 'paying' lines, and restricting them rigorously to those lines. The training given may be of an arduous, thorough character, so that the faculties of the pupil are stretched and exercised to their utmost in those lines. This would be called 'cram,' because it involves exclusive devotion to the answering of certain examination-papers. I call it 'good cram.'
" 'Bad cram,' on the other hand, consists in temporarily impressing upon the candidate's mind a collection of facts, dates, or formula, held in a wholly undigested state, and ready to be disgorged in the examination-room by an act of mere memory. A candidate unable to appreciate the bearing of Euclid's reasoning in the first book of his 'Elements,' may learn the propositions off by heart—diagrams, letters, and all—like a Sunday-scholar learning
