WHERE SWALLOWS EOOST 



CONTRIBUTING little to the ma- 

 terial wealth of the nation, the 

 Hackensack marshes of north- 

 ern New Jersey are usually re- 

 garded as " waste land." By the 

 farmer they are termed " salt 

 medders," and their waving 

 grasses are of value to him only as " bedding " for 

 cattle. In winter the muskrat hunter reaps a har- 

 vest of pelts there. The down of the " cat-tails " is 

 gathered for cushion stuffing, and the bladed leaves 

 for chair bottoms. To the gunner they are the 

 resort of Ducks, Snipe, Rail, and Reedbirds, which 

 each year visit them in decreasing numbers ; while 

 to the thousands who daily pass them on the encir- 

 cling railroads they are barren and uninteresting. 

 But if beauty is a sufficient cause for being, then 

 these marshes may claim a right to existence. 



In preglacial times this region was probably for- 

 ested, but now the forest is buried beneath the drift 

 of the glacier which deposited fragments of Palisade 

 and Orange Mountain trap rock on Staten Island. 

 During the depression of the land which occurred as 

 the ice gradually receded, the waters of the sea 

 doubtless passed up here and the meadow was a 

 larger " Newark Bay." Then commenced their slow 



