Meantime, in France, two men of some scientific pretensions, both of them members of the _Académie des Sciences_, Lauraguais[248] and D’Arcet, had discovered the kaolin deposits near Alençon. Lauraguais had soon after 1760 succeeded in making some kind of porcelain with the materials he had found. He was, however, forestalled by Guettard, a rival chemist in the service of the Duke of Orleans, who in November 1765 read a paper before the _Académie_ on the kaolin and petuntse of Alençon. Lauraguais, in disgust, after a violent rejoinder, came over to England. In a curious letter dated April 1766, Dr. Darwin, writing to Wedgwood, says: ‘Count Laragaut has been at Birmingham & offer’d ye Secret of making ye finest old China as cheap as your Pots. He says ye materials are in England. That ye secret has cost £16,000--y^{t}He will sell it for £2000--He is a Man of Science, dislikes his own Country, was six months in ye Bastile for speaking against ye Government--loves every thing English’; but, adds Darwin, ‘I suspect his Scientific Passion is stronger than perfect Sanity’ (Miss Meteyard, _Life of Wedgwood_, vol. i. p. 436). Lauraguais, in 1766, proposed to take out a patent for making not only the coarser species of china, but ‘the more beautiful ware of the Indies and the finest of Japan.’ The specification was never enrolled, and nothing came of it. There exist, however, a few specimens of china marked with the letters B. L. (Brancas Lauraguais) in a flowing hand, which are attributed to the Count.[249] The paste, says Professor Church, is fine, hard, and of good colour. An analysis gives 58 per cent. of silica, 36 per cent. of alumina, and 6 per cent. of other bases. It will be observed that the percentage of alumina in this porcelain is exceptionally high. We see, therefore, that before the year 1770, when Cookworthy removed to Bristol, true porcelain had been made in more than one place in England, but not with enough success to allow the new ware to compete with the soft pastes of Worcester and elsewhere. So in France, although the new paste was introduced at Sèvres in 1769, it was only in 1774, so Brongniart tells us, that the manufacture of hard porcelain was firmly established. Champion seems to have been on friendly terms with Cookworthy, and in 1773 he bought from the latter the entire patent rights. In the two previous years much of the new porcelain had been made. It is claimed for it in advertisements that, unlike the English china generally, it will wear as well as the East Indian, and that the enamelled porcelain, though nearly as cheap as the English blue and white, ‘comes very near, and in some pieces equals, the Dresden, which this work more particularly imitates.’ This is from a local journal of November 1772, and we may add that not only the ware was imitated, but also the well-known marks of Dresden.[250]