VALUE OF MOSQUITO CONTROL 



NEW JERSEY has roughly the shape of an hourglass, is 169.5 miles 

 from Cape May City to Port Jervis and has a minimum width of 

 31.5 miles between the Delaware River at Trenton and Raritan Bay on 

 the east coast. The northern section consists of low mountains and val- 

 leys with many rugged streams. The mountains disappear by the time 

 the latitude of Trenton and New Brunswick are reached, and the south- 

 ern portion of the hourglass is nearly all a comparatively level coastal 

 plain except the Monmouth highlands extending southwestward from 

 Sandy Hook in Monmouth County. Along the upper regions of the 

 Hackensack River and extending along Newark Bay, Arthur Kill, Rar- 

 itan Bay, Atlantic Ocean, and Delaware Bay this coastal plain is bor- 

 dered very generally with low-lying salt marshes of which, according to 

 the Geological Report of the State of New Jersey for 1895, there are 

 296,000 acres. 



Woodland pool and fresh water swamp mosquitoes occur generally 

 throughout the northern, and to a less extent, southern section of the 

 state. Salt marsh mosquitoes breed everywhere salt marshes are located, 

 and because they can fly over adjacent uplands, cover so large a section 

 of the coastal and bay borders as to infest the territory on which three- 

 fourths of the state's population lives. The house mosquito's abundance 

 appears to be correlated with the presence and density of human popu- 

 lation. 



Transportation is historically a factor having much influence, even 

 on agricultural development. In the days of New Jersey's early settle- 

 ment water-borne transportation was dominant, and consequently the 

 early settlements were made first upon such good land as lay adjacent 

 to navigable water courses, where trade could be carried on. The two 

 outstanding navigable waters consisted of a group of bays, inlets, and 

 rivers in the neighborhood of New York and Newark Bay and of the 

 Delaware Bay and River. Hence, we have the great metropolitan dis- 

 tricts around New York and Philadelphia. 



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