VALUE OF MOSQUITO CONTROL 7 



Atlantic County has as much salt marsh as any other county in the 

 state, amounting to 53,325 acres as stated in the Report of the Geolo- 

 gist for 1895. Ocean County has 40,400 and Burlington County has 

 9,943. Cape May County has about 53,368 acres. It is an undeniable 

 fact that Atlantic County salt marsh is better and more completely 

 ditched than the counties immediately north or the county immediately 

 south. The county immediately to the north on which we have figures is 

 Ocean and the average catch in five traps for five years was 5,062. In 

 Atlantic County the average catch in four traps for five years was 

 4,381 while in Cape May, which lies immediately to the south of Atlan- 

 tic, four traps in five years show an average of 6,228, clearly indicating 

 that reduction of salt marsh mosquitoes is best where the ditching is 

 most complete. 



Through the agency of the Civilian Conservation Corps camp lo- 

 cated near Cedarville in the season of 1936, 1,531,391 feet of ditching 

 were cut or recut in the salt marshes lying off Cedarville. For the years 

 from 1932 to 1936 inclusive the Cedarville mosquito trap caught an 

 average of 19,592 females per year. In 1937, after this limited amount 

 of ditch cutting had been done in the neighborhood of Cedarville, the 

 total catch was 5,790 female solUcitans, or a reduction of seventy per 

 cent. The correlation between salt marsh mosquito ditching and reduc- 

 tion in salt marsh mosquitoes seems definite and thus again it appears 

 that anti-mosquito work has produced enormous reduction in the salt 

 marsh mosquito population and that the greatest reductions are pres- 

 ent where salt marsh anti-mosquito work is the most complete. 



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