The California Silk Center Association was formed with a large capital on paper. The association bought which now form part of Riverside. It was the intention of the association to found a colony there of silk growers and silk weavers. Sixty families were reported ready to locate on the colony grounds as soon as negotiations were completed. Prevost, the leader of the group, died shortly after the purchase was made, and the colony project died later. At first, the profits from the seri-culture fad were large, not, however, from the manufacture of silk, but from the sale of silkworm eggs. When the industry was launched, eggs sold at ten dollars an ounce and the worms were good layers. One seri-culturist reported a net profit of US$1,000 an acre made in sixty days from the sale of eggs. Another realized US$1,260 an acre in a single season. The net profits from his three acres of trees and cocoons exceeded the net profit on his neighbor's 10,000 acres of grain. With such immense returns from such small investments, it is not strange that the sericulture craze became epidemic. Mulberry plantations multiplied until the bounties paid threatened the state treasury with bankruptcy; in 1867 or 1868, the law was repealed. Out of the hundreds of thousands of bounty-bought cocoons, only one piece of silk was known to be manufactured, and that was a flag for the State Capitol. Counting bounties paid and labor lost on a non-producing industry, indirectly that flag cost the people of the commonwealth not less than US$250,000.