WHERE SWALLOWS ROOST 
ONTRIBUTING 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 
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