Biographical Memoir of M. Duhamtl. p 



chemists were imprisoned, in the hope of forcing them to make 

 gold. 



Fortunately we were no longer in the 12th century ; the King, 

 to whom M. Duhamel's friends were obliged to make direct ap- 

 plication, gave him all justice, and the circumstance having 

 recalled him to the remembrance of the minister, contributed in 

 the end to his withdrawing himself from the precarious situa- 

 tion to which he had been reduced. 



In 1775, he was named commissary of the council for the in- 

 spection of forges and furnaces, which opened up anew the 

 path to employment. However, he always regretted that this 

 event broke up his plans with regard to the barren grounds, 

 so firmly persuaded was he that they would not only be a new 

 source of public prosperity, but also a certain basis to his own 

 private fortune. 



While he was connected with his great foundery, he had 

 begun to make known his own discoveries and observations. In 

 1772, he made a journey to the Pyrenees, and shewed the advan- 

 tages of the Catalonian method of manufacturing iron, and the 

 possibility of applying it to the mines of the interior of the king- 

 dom. It is well known that this method consists in making the 

 ore pass immediately into a state of semi-fluidity, in a crucible, 

 where it is preserved from the contact of air, and in submitting 

 it immediately after to the action of the hammer. In this man- 

 ner the great outlay required for the construction of furnaces 

 is saved, much fuel is economised, and less is lost by combus- 

 tion ; the iron is separated and refined in the same crucible, and 

 by a single operation. To prove that the rock ores of the 

 Pyrenees were not the only kinds that might be thus treated, he 

 had ores transported from the Angoumois and reduced at the 

 Pyrenees. The operation succeeded perfectly. 



Once free from all engagements with individuals, he set no 

 bounds to his zeal, and his writings and experiments became 

 more numerous. In 1775, he visited the mines of Huelgoat 

 in Lower Bretagne, and discovered to the great benefit of 

 the proprietors, that a substance of an earthy appearance, 

 which they rejected as useless, was very rich in lead and silver. 

 In 1777, he improved the forges in the same country, as well 



