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Albany, 1885, although antedating the recent important nicsquito di.s 

 coveries, is well worth reading- by all pviblie-minded persons, and the 

 annual reports of the State geologist of New Jerse^v for 1897 and 1898, 

 in which the reclaniation of the great Hackensack Meadows, near Jersey 

 City, Newark, and Elizabeth, N. J., makes interesting reading along 

 this line. Work on these marshes has actuall}^ been begun. The 

 solution of this case is taking the form of separate action by cities and 

 their municipalities, each improving the territory within its corporate 

 limits. The city of Newark has a tract of 4,600 acres of marsh within 

 its limits: Jersey City has within its limits 2,086 acres of tide marsh, 

 and Elizabeth has 2,658 acres. The three cities, therefore, have about 

 8,700 acres of the 27,000 acres lying between Elizabeth and Hacken- 

 sack. The sanitary importance of reclaiming these lands is of the 

 greatest, but the capabilities of the improvement plans are attracting 

 attention on the part of capitalists and business men, who see in these 

 tide lands valuable sites for manufacturing, industrial, and commercial 

 activity. 



Even to individual land owners of a community, the drainage of 

 swamps and the consequent abolition of mosquitoes will in many cases 

 become well worth while. The writer knows of a town in New Jersey, 

 with a good elevation, within easy distance of New York, and admirably 

 adapted for summer residences of New Yorkers, where the mosquitoes 

 are so abundant as to prevent the rise in the price of real estate. An 

 examination of the surrounding country has convinced him that if the 

 large real estate owners were to club together the}^ might, by the 

 expenditure of a few thousand dollars, largely do away with the mos- 

 quito plague. Another case which is well worth specific mention, and 

 the truth of which the writer will vouch for, may best be told in the 

 words of a correspondent, printed in one of the Flushing papers late 

 in March: 



In the town of Stratford, Conn., where I have resided for the past forty-five years, 

 we have been greatly plagued by swarms of mosquitoes, so great, in fact, that the 

 "Stratford mosquito" became a well-known characteristic of Stratford. We have in 

 the southern part of our town, bordering on the sound, several acres of marsh lanil 

 or meadow, which would become periodically overflowed with water in the summer 

 and a tremendous breeding groimd for mosquitoes, aud this plague to the town con- 

 tinued until about 1890-91, when a party from Bridgeport, Conn., purchased a large 

 section of the meadows and began to protect them by a dike, both on the north and 

 south ends, which shut out the water. In addition to this, numerous drain ditches 

 were made, which helped to carry the water away. The result of this work made 

 the land perfectly dry and spongy, so that after a rain no pools collected on the sur- 

 face of the meadow and prevented the creation of the mosquitoes. The transforma- 

 tion was so remarkable that people outside the town would hardly believe that it 

 had been effected, and a year or two later the town voted a special appropriation oi 

 $2,000 to the party who imdertook to build the dike and render the meadows mos- 

 quito proof. It had also the effect of placing on the market a large tract of land 

 elevated from the somid for residences, and as many as 25 summer residences have 



