242 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



The whole report, covering 39 printed pages, was, as already 

 mentioned, submitted to the Secretary of the Treasury on July 

 21, 1866. In the Annual Report of the Academy for 1866 

 Joseph Henry said regarding the work of the committee: 



" . . . . The duty devolved upon the members of the committee was one of much 

 labor and responsibility. The tables accompanying the report are of much value, 

 and will be referred to by all persons engaged in pursuits requiring a knowledge 

 of specific gravity and volume, at various temperatures, of alcoholic spirits of 

 different strength; they are not only indispensable to the distiller, rectifier and 

 gauger of spirits, but will prove extremely useful in the laboratory of the chemist, 

 and in many processes of manufacture involving the use of alcohol." 49 



At an earlier date, however, on April 19, 1866, the committee 

 recommended to the Treasury Department the adoption of a 

 definition of " proof spirit," and this definition was incorporated 

 in the internal revenue law, 50 together with the provision that 

 the Secretary of the Treasury should procure suitable hydrom- 

 eters and other instruments. At the beginning of the fiscal year 

 1866-67, therefore, the Treasury Department was in possession 

 of the information necessary for the establishment of a new 

 system of proving and gauging spirits and the authority for 

 carrying it into effect. In his report for 1867 the Commissioner 

 of Internal Revenue remarks on this subject as follows : 



" For several years there had been frequent complaints of a lack of uniformity in 

 the inspection of distilled spirits in different sections of the country. The accounts 

 of revenue officers were disturbed, and the interest of shippers prejudiced by diffi- 

 culty in procuring their proper allowance for leakage. The Treasury, too, was fre- 

 quently, it is presumed, unfavorably affected by an excess of such allowance. To 

 secure, therefore, a uniform and correct system of inspection and gauging of spirits 

 subject to tax throughout the United States, the Secretary of the Treasury, in Feb- 

 ruary last, adopted the hydrometer of Mr. Tagliabue, of New York. This hydrom- 

 eter was approved by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, consisting 

 of Professor Henry, General Meigs, and Professor Hilgard, and has been fur- 

 nished, with an accompanying manual prepared and printed for that purpose, to 

 collectors of the Internal Revenue for the use of duly appointed inspectors in 

 their several districts. The caliper and head-rod system of gauging has been 



49 Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1866, p. 3. 



"See Stat. at Large, vol. 14, 1868, p. 157, 39th Congress, ist Session, chap. 184, sec. 33, 

 and Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1866, p. 21. 



