162 Biographical Notice of [March, 



deputation to the mining districts of Germany, Sweden, and 

 England. The merit of young Duhamel had attracted the notice 

 of M. de Trudaine, Controller General, who, accordingly, in 

 1754, appointed him to visit the mining establishments of France, 

 and two years after associated him with M. Jars in the important 

 and delicate commission above-mentioned. In the course of 

 three years the zeal and indefatigable activity of the two asso- 

 ciates had carried them through the mining districts of Saxony, 

 Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, the Tyrol, Carinthia, and Styria ; 

 they then returned home, bringing with them a vast treasure of 

 useful and interesting observations, particularly with regard to 

 the manufacture of iron and of steel. These were immediately 

 applied to practice, and thus gave the first impulse to the great 

 exertions which have since been made by France in order to 

 perfect the quality of the most intrinsically valuable, and most 

 extensively useful, of all the mineral productions. 



M. Duhamel appears not to have accompanied M. Jars in his 

 subsequent journies to England and to the north of Europe, but to 

 have been employed for some years in reducing to practice the 

 information which he had collected The iron works at RufTec 

 were founded, or at least rendered productive, under his super- 

 intendance : the first good cemented steel of French manufac- 

 ture was made here, the annual quantity of which, even in 1767, 

 had already amounted to about 3000 quintals. Having, by his 

 regulations and personal superintendance placed this important 

 establishment beyond the risk of ordinary casualties, he success- 

 ively undertook the management of other mining adventures, 

 and thus communicated to a perpetually enlarging circle the 

 information gained by him in foreign countries, modified and 

 adapted, by his own resources and good sense, to the peculiar 

 circumstances of each case. 



In 1781 he was nominated Inspector General of Mines ; and 

 the periodical journies made by him in the performance of this 

 duty afforded him increased opportunities both of acquiring 

 knowledge and of putting it into practice. Shortly after, he 

 was appointed Professor of Mining and of Metallurgy in the 

 Ecole Royal des Mines, a trust for which he was, perhaps, the 

 best qualified of any man in France. He retained this situation 

 for 12 years, in the course of which almost all those able men 

 who now adorn and dignify the Corps des Mines came under his 

 instructions. 



He published a treatise on subterranean geometry in 1787, 

 and drew up for the Encyclopedie Methodique the whole of the; 

 articles relative to practical mining. He was elected a member 

 of the Academy of Sciences, and communicated to that learned 

 body several memoirs, which are inserted in the series of their 

 Transactions. 



In his 59th year the French Revolution broke out ; but the 

 various chiefs and parties, under whose brief and iron sway the 



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