462 AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



earnings are sufficient to enable them to get out of the crowded 

 city at the end of the day's work to enjoy the blessings of pure 

 air and nature quiet. There is beauty in all these places and in 

 many others not far off; but the blight of the moscjuito pest lies 

 over all. Magnificent dwelling sites find no purchasers because 

 of the necessity for close screening to keep out mosquitoes and 

 because, as soon as darkness sets in, piazzas must be abandoned 

 to escape the annoyance caused by these little nuisances. In 

 almost any car on any morning train to the city during the sum- 

 mer, somebody may be heard talking of mosquitoes, and when 

 they are "bad," one hears little else. 



Naturally enough these communities were among the first to 

 become interested in the matter of mosquito control and South 

 Orange, under the. direction of Mr. Spencer Miller, was the first 

 community to do systematic work. A history of this work as 

 given by Mr. S. E. Allen, a member of the South Orange Board 

 of Health, will be found on a subsequent page. 



The work was begun while the idea was dominant that mos- 

 quitoes did not in any case travel far from their place of birth 

 and that a community could protect itself no matter what its 

 neighbors might do or fail to do. 



There is no question that conditions have been vastly improved 

 at South Oranei-e, to the point almost of practically wiping out 

 local breeding places. Nevertheless the town is not free from 

 mosquitoes and sometimes there are a great many of them. 



Among the earliest points investigated by me were : iirst, what 

 species of mosquitoes do really occur in numbers in the towns 

 along the Orange Mountains and, second, what species breed in 

 the mountains or in the localities themselves. The result was 

 interesting enough, for it determined that, while there were 

 plenty of mosquitoes bred in the woods on the mountains and 

 along their base, the species that were active in the streets and on 

 porches were not these locals, but the salt marsh forms. 



The full range of towns was collected over, not once but many 

 times, in every month of the summer and for three years. In 

 addition specimens were sent me from time to time during each 

 summer and, from the earliest appearance of the insects until 

 midsummer at least, cantator and sollicitans were almost exclus- 

 ively present. After that period pipiens began to be represented, 

 especially indoors, and s\dvestris joined the salt marsh species as 

 an outdoor pest. 



On the mountain sides and tops where they are covered with 

 woodland there are many holes and sink-like depressions which 

 hold melted snow and spring rains long enough to bring large 



