The thing dreaded came to pass. The plague spread; Spain and Italy were smitten. It became necessary to seek for eggs in the Islands of the Archipelago, in Greece, or in Turkey. These eggs, at first very good, became infected in their turn in their native country; the epidemic had spread even to that distance. The eggs were then procured from Syria and the provinces of the Caucasus. The plague followed the trade in the eggs. In 1864 all the cultivations, from whatever corner of Europe they came, were either diseased or suspected of being so. In the extreme East, Japan alone still remained healthy. Agricultural societies, governments, all the world was preoccupied with this scourge and its invading march. It was said to be some malady like cholera which attacked the silkworms. Hundreds of pamphlets were published each year. The most foolish remedies were proposed, as quite infallible--from flowers of sulphur, cinders, and soot spread over the worms, or over the leaves of the mulberry, to gaseous fumigations of chlorine, of tar, and of sulphurous acid. Wine, rum, absinthe, were prescribed for the worms, and after the absinthe it was advised to try creosote and nitrate of silver. In 1863 the Minister of Agriculture signed an agreement with an Italian who had offered for purchase a process destined to combat the disease of the silkworms, by which he (the Minister) engaged himself, in case the efficacy of the remedy was established, to pay 500,000 francs as an indemnity to the Italian silk cultivator. Experiments were instituted in twelve departments, but without any favourable result. In 1865 the weight of the cocoons had fallen to four million kilogrammes. This entailed a loss of 100,000,000 francs. The Senate was assailed by a despairing petition signed by 3,600 mayors, municipal councillors, and capitalists of the silk-cultivating departments. The great scientific authority of M. Dumas, his knowledge of silk husbandry, his sympathy for one of the departments most severely smitten, the Gard, his own native place, all contributed to cause him to be nominated Reporter of the Commission. While drawing up his report the idea occurred to him of trying to persuade Pasteur to undertake researches as to the best means of combating the epidemic.