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 : 15 



" 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. 



