302 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
COMMITTEE ON PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC 
APPARATUS. 1884 
The tariff act approved March 3, 1883, contained the expres- 
sion “ philosophical and scientific apparatus, instruments, and 
preparations,” and upon the claim being put forward by some 
importers that certain articles which they wished to bring in were 
“philosophical” instruments the Treasury Department found 
itself unable to decide whether they were really such, or how 
they differed from “ scientific”? instruments. The Acting Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, H. F. French, thereupon addressed a 
letter to Prof. Spencer F. Baird, Secretary of the Smithsonian 
Institution, asking that the Institution prepare a list of philo- 
sophical instruments for the use of the collectors of customs. Pro- 
fessor Baird having suggested that the Academy might prepare 
such a list, Secretary French wrote to the President under date 
of September 13, 1884, stating that the Department would be 
obliged if he would furnish the list. The President, O. C. 
Marsh, thereupon appointed a committee consisting of George 
J. Brush, Wolcott Gibbs, S$. H. Scudder, Simon Newcomb and 
George F. Barker, to report on the subject in question. The 
committee reported later in the year, explaining the reasons 
which made it impracticable to prepare a list of instruments, 
and explaining the meaning of the expression ‘“ philosophical 
instruments ” as follows: **° 
“ Although the term ‘ philosophical ’ as applied to instruments has long ceased 
to be employed in scientific language, it has a well defined signification in ordinary 
use. It has come down from a time when nearly all our knowledge of inanimate 
nature was comprehended under the general term ‘natural philosophy,’ and the 
instruments and apparatus necessary for acquiring and illustrating that knowledge 
were termed ‘ philosophical.’ The obvious intent of Congress in specially desig- 
nating philosophical instruments was to cover the case of institutions and indi- 
viduals who might import the instruments and apparatus for the purpose of 
improving natural knowledge. It therefore appears to us that the terms ‘ philo- 
sophical apparatus and instruments’ in both clauses quoted should be held to cover 
all such instruments and apparatus imported for this purpose. 
The correspondence and the report of the committee are in the Annual Report of the 
Academy for 1884, pp. 65-67. 
