370 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



breed there. It was a case of natural elimination of a breeding 

 area. 



The territory between the Plank road on the north and the 

 Newark and New York Railroad on the south is in good con- 

 dition so far as mosquito breeding is concerned. Numbers of 

 natural ditches or creeks run through here and there is always 

 a good supply of fish in the pools. Cat-tails are also springing 

 up all over this place and are taking possession. 



The area between the Newark and New York Railroad and 

 the Lawyers ditch is one solid bed of cat-tails in which no wrig- 

 lers were ever taken no matter how close the search. Killies are 

 to be found in numbers all through this place and it is perfectly 

 safe so far as mosquito breeding goes. 



South of the Lawyers ditch and between it and the Lehigh 

 Valley Railroad, a distance of about a mile, was one of the 

 worst breeding places on the Newark meadow. 



In 1903 an experiment with machine ditching was tried on 

 the territory between the Lawyers ditch and the Balbach or 

 Hamburg Place road. The worst parts of the meadow were 

 picked out and between 35,000 and 40,000 feet of ditches were 

 cut with the True ditcher. The ditches were six inches wide, two 

 feet deep, and drained perfectly from the beginning. They laid 

 that piece of rotten meadow so dry that the grass that grows 

 there can now be mowed by machine, where before the hay could 

 only be cut in winter because no horse could get over the marsh 

 in summer. 



The work was so obviously successful that the Board of Health 

 asked and finally obtained fron the Common Council an appro- 

 priation of $5,000 to complete the mosquito drainage of the 

 meadows. Work was begun at the place where it was left off 

 in 1903 and the remaining danger points between the Lawyers 

 ditch and Hamburg Place road were finished. Work was then 

 started on the south side of Hamburg Place road toward the 

 Lehigh Valley Railroad, at a time when the second brood of 

 mosquito larvae were just hatching all over the meadow. The 

 work of sixty-five men and the machine proceeded so fast that, 

 before ©ne mosquito of this second brood had time to hatch and 

 get away, every pool was drained and the larvae and pupae were 

 killed. Many ditches were cut here and the sods taken out were 

 used to fill the old breeding holes. 



It might be interjected here that all the work done was under 

 the general direction of Mr. Brehme, whom I detailed for that 

 purpose, and he deserves credit for the excellent judgment he 

 displayed in obtaining good results under generally difficult 

 conditions. 



