336 GENERAL REPORT OF THE SCIENTIFIC COMMISSION. 
But when, after 1789, the barriers became removed which 
limited the freedom of commercial relations between the 
different provinces of our territory ; when, more than all, 
general warfare rendered necessary, for the supply of the 
army, the transport of large troops of cattle ; then, did the 
epizootic descend from the mountains where it had so long 
lodged, and spread upon the plains with frightful rapidity, 
multiplying its ravages according to the large number of 
animals the war required and forced to concentrate on some 
determined point, and as the migrations became repeated 
from the various (mountainous) quarters. During the entire 
duration of the former reign, the same causes continued to 
favour the propagation of this fearful disease; nor has it 
since discontinued its ravages, notwithstanding the pacification 
of Europe. Brooding in the parts of the country into which 
it has been transported, it has continued to spread to one 
place after* another, through the medium of commercial inter- 
course, until, on the day on which we are writing, the disease 
has arrived at that height of extension that it is found to rage 
with the greatest fatality among the bovine population of up- 
wards of forty of our departments. These are, Aire , Allier, 
Avignon , &c. &c. 
Nor are most other countries of Europe more free from 
this pest than our own. In Italy, Sardinia, Switzerland, 
Austria, Hanover, Sweden, Denmark, and, of late, in Holland 
and England, very considerable ravages have, the same as in 
France, inflicted public damage to an extent with difficulty 
to be repaired. 
There has not yet been drawn up any general official sta- 
tistics which would permit us to estimate, with any exactitude, 
the prodigious loss that has been sustained through the disease; 
though some documents in existence (already published) give, 
in most of the departments, accounts of them. 
From information collected by three of the inspectors, we 
learn that contagion was to be regarded as the principal cause 
and first producer of the malady, in localit ies where it prevailed 
over a great extent of country. 
Such opinion, however, though having for its basis, prac- 
tical facts, of great importance for their number and accord- 
ance, had not the sanction of a scientific rigorous demonstra- 
tion, on which account many persons refused their acquiescence 
to it. 
Affairs remained in this condition when M. Dumas, Minis- 
ter of Agriculture at the time, resolved to obtain a decisive 
solution of the question of contagion ; and in order effectually 
to do this, he appointed a scientific commission to investigate 
