214 Memoir of M. D\iubuisson de Voisins. 



vice, he took upon himself particularly all that related to 

 the distribution of water in the town. For this purpose, not 

 disdaining to engage in new studies, he repaired to Paris to 

 examine the details of the mode of distribution in that city ; 

 but, on his return, he engaged in entirely new experiments 

 and researches on the perte de charge, in the passage of wa- 

 ter across conduits and their branches — on the reduction 

 which might be made in the thickness of the pipes usually em- 

 ployed, and the great saving of expense resulting therefrom. 

 Lastly, he was so accurate in his calculations both with re- 

 gard to the distribution of the water and the entire expense 

 of the undertaking, that not only all the parts of the town 

 were liberally supplied with fresh and pure water, but, in a 

 sum-total of upwards of a million, there was not a deviation 

 of 10,000 francs from his original computation. 



In his History of the Fountains, M. D'Aubuisson is far from 

 assigning too large a proportion to himself in this important 

 work ; he says less than we have done in this respect. Al- 

 ways studious of truth, he takes pleasure in rendering justice 

 to all,— to the members of the Town-Council, his colleagues, 

 the Commissioners of Water, and even to his opponents ; to 

 a skilful mechanician, M. Abadie, to MM. Girard, Mallet, and 

 Egault, engineers of waters at Paris, for the information he 

 obtained frpm them ; and finally, to the Council of Ponts-et 

 Chaussees, and the venerable M. De Prony, who, by his judi- 

 cious opinions as to the best disposition of hydraulic wheels, 

 effected a great saving in the expense of the moving water, 

 and in the dimensions of the canal by which the water escapes. 

 We cannot quit this subject without reminding the reader 

 that all these cares and labours, of ten years' duration, — this 

 direction, given by an engineer of high merit and the most 

 scrupulous conscientiousness, cost the town absolutely no- 

 thing ; and this disinterested benevolence was unquestion- 

 ably of greater advantage to it than the posthumous gift of 

 chief magistrate Lagane, prepetuated as it is on a marble 

 monument. In this, M. D'Aubuisson naturally followed the 

 noble impulse of his habitual sentiments ; he had not even the 

 idea of making his civic zeal appear more valuable in the 

 eyes of his fellow-citizens. He worked, he said, as a town- 



