Biographical Memoir of M. Duhamel. 15 



It is not a work of an elevated order of geometry, nor one that 

 had the pretension of offering new mathematical truths : it is 

 a purely practical treatise, a sort of surveying of a particular 

 kind, but which the art of mining could want, and which every 

 miner would have been obliged to make out for himself, had 

 not the author spared him the trouble. This work is at the 

 present day the manual of all who practise the art of mining in 

 France ; and as if the light of improved science ought to re- 

 flect toward the focus from which it had issued, it has been trans- 

 lated into German, and is very generally diffused among the 

 miners of that country. 



In the subsequent part of his work, M. Duhamel intended to 

 treat of the other processes of the art, of the various modes of 

 digging, incasing, walling, ventilating, and drying mines, of 

 transporting the ore, picking, washing, stamping, melting, and 

 refining it. The police of mines, their administration, the ques- 

 tions of law which refer to them, and the regulations to which 

 they are subjected in different countries, were equally to be ex- 

 plained. But the events which involved the country in confu- 

 sion a short time after the publication of his first volume, arrest- 

 ed the progress of the work, and we can form no idea of it 

 excepting from the fragments which he has inserted in the En- 

 cyclopedic Methodique. 



During these events, M. Duhamel himself was much dis- 

 tressed ; but he acted as on all other occsions, he took precau- 

 tions without complaining. At the first appearance of danger, 

 he purchased some lands in America, and formed the resolution 

 of carrying his talents to that country. 



When on the point of embarking, he still granted some mo- 

 ments to the tears of his family : but in the few days which this 

 delay occupied, the men who menaced every kind of merit were 

 thrust down, and immediately the proposals of the government, 

 which had been restored to some degree of moderation, fixed 

 him anew in his country. After this period, he discharged the 

 duties of professor and inspector-general of mines, and in the 

 latter quality performed important missions, always with zeal, 

 and always without ostentation. At length his age, and loss of 

 strength, forced him in 1811 to retire. He was then 81 years 

 old. The remaining-part of his life was passed in calm re- 



