THE SALT MARSHES ON THE NORTH COAST OF PORTO RICO 



INTRODUCTION. 



With the ever increasing population in nearly all parts of the globe 

 the demand for food stuffs is constantly rising and even the adoption 

 of more intensive methods of cultivation has not been able to keep pace 

 with it. Consequently, large stretches of land, which had formerly been 

 thought to be unfit for the production of crops, have in recent times been 

 taken into cultivation. Immense areas of slight rainfall in the western 

 United States have been reclaimed for agricultural purposes, simply by 

 providing them with drainage and irrigation. In northern Europe people 

 found themselves obliged long ago to utilize marsh and moor lands 

 which presented the most difficult problems in their reclamation. In 

 Late years attention has been called to lands of a similar nature in the 

 United States, especially in Wisconsin, Indiana, and in the Atlantic and 

 Gulf States. It is true that in some of these cases, as for instance in 

 Connecticut and New Jersey, the principal reason for the drying of these 

 marsh areas was the fact that millions of mosquitoes annually breed in 

 them, rendering all the surrounding country uninhabitable ; but even 

 there the gain in arable land is no small item. 



The island of Porto Rico has, in proportion to its size, a considerable 

 area of swamp and marsh lands. The good land which may be used 

 profitably for the growing of sugar cane is practically all under 

 cultivation now; prices of land are constantly rising, and thus the 

 question has recently arisen as to whether the extended marshes, commonly 

 called "poyales", which are found along the coast, may be made to 

 produce cane at a profit, A beginning at reclamation has already been 

 made in one of these marshes, and the studies reported on in this bulletin, 

 have mainly been upon that particular marsh. 



There are several swamp areas of considerable extent on the north 

 coast, and the one just mentioned is the largest of them all. It extends 

 from the vicinity of Arecibo to the west to within a small distance of 

 Barceloneta to the east, and is usually called the "Carlo de Tiburones" 

 or "Laguna de Tiburones". The other marsh areas are from west to 



C3.ST ! 



