4 Biographical Memoir of M. Duhamel. 



in all this sterility were uncompensated, or at least whether 

 every thing had been done to determine this question. 



Now, a brief examination of the preceding acts of the go- 

 vernment, will presently shew that the mines, when they were 

 not sacrificed to the cupidity of men of influence, had been 

 given up to the empiricism of ignorant adventurers. The 

 languid state in which they remained, was therefore by no means 

 either necessary or irremediable ; but to restore them to life, 

 the first step to be taken was evidently to instruct those who 

 were to work them. M. de Seychelles, then minister of fi- 

 nances, was fully capable of appreciating such enlightened views 

 when proposed, and readily obtained for them the royal sanc- 

 tion. 



To teach the art of mining, however, it was necessary to have 

 instructors, and this country did not furnish so much as a single 

 individual qualified, in a practical point of view, to undertake 

 the office. 



In fact, this art, which received its birth in Germany during 

 the middle ages, had remained almost confined to working people. 

 Scarcely had even a ^qw treatises on Metallurgy and Assaying, 

 founded on a rude system of chemistry, begun to be spread in 

 France in the form of imperfect translations. It was only on 

 the spot itself, from the mouth of these workmen, and in the 

 view of their labours, that notions could be acquired regarding 

 the rock formations which contained the mines, the laws of their 

 situation, the best means of mining them, tracing them, and 

 purifying their productions. 



But if the workmen alone possessed all these secrets, it was 

 necessary that those who were to wrest them from them should 

 be more than mere workmen ; enlightened minds could alone 

 collect into a system that mass of scattered facts, the aggregate 

 of which those who knew them were very far from being able to 

 apprehend, or even to form a conception of their relations. 



It was therefore resolved to take into the school of Bridges 

 and Highways, some young persons already versed in mecha- 

 nics and physics, and for the purpose of their being educated 

 in the art of mining, to send them into the districts where the 

 greatest progress had been made in that art, namely the Hartz 

 in Saxony, Austria, and Hungary. 



