400 MOSQUITOES OF NORTH AMERICA 
act shall not exceed three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The Comptroller 
of the State shall draw his warrant in payment of all bills approved by the 
director of the State Experiment Station, and the Treasurer of the State shall 
pay all warrants so drawn to the extent of the amount appropriated by the 
Legislature. 
“41. This act shall take effect November first, one thousand nine hundred 
and six. 
“ Approved April 20, 1906.” 
This law was drafted only after the most careful observations by Doctor Smith 
and his assistants, and after they had made themselves perfectly familiar with 
the conditions existing in the salt-marsh area in New Jersey and with the exact 
life-histories of the different species of mosquitoes involved, and also after pre- 
liminary drainage work had been undertaken and carried to successful con- 
clusion over part of the area without the assistance of State funds. 
Doctor Smith had found that three species, of approximately similar habits, 
develop in the salt marshes of New Jersey and migrate inland for long dis- 
tances—up to 40 miles in some instances—thus making local work on the part 
of inland communities by no means perfectly efficient. Citizens’ organizations 
had, for example, done excellent work in the way of destroying household and 
other fresh-water breeding mosquitoes, in South Orange, Summit, and other 
inland towns; but occasional inland migrations of swarms of salt-water species 
necessitated the retention of house screens and discouraged the community 
workers. The salt-marsh species, studied by Doctor Smith, are Aédes cantator, 
A. sollicitans, and A. teniorhynchus. The former is the more northern and 
earliest, forming the bulk of the specimens on the marshes north of the Raritan 
River. South of that point cantator makes an early brood only and sollicitans 
is the abundant species during the rest of the season until late fall when cantator 
sometimes reappears. He found that teniorhynchus is never so common as the 
others and is a midsummer species. All of these species lay their eggs in the 
marsh mud, and Doctor Smith found that these eggs may retain their vitality 
for three years, even if repeatedly covered with water. He found that every time 
a marsh becomes water-covered some eggs hatch, and if the water remains long 
enough the larve reach maturity. 
To prevent these mosquitoes breeding in the marshes, a system has been 
developed by which the force working under the State Entomologist makes deep 
narrow ditches in the salt marshes by means of special machinery. These 
ditches are 10 inches wide and generally 30 inches deep, the sides being per- 
pendicular. The upper twelve or eighteen inches of the ordinary salt marsh is 
peat or turf, and the water drains readily from it. Below this peat is sand, mud 
or clay; and at 30 inches a depth has been reached which is below high-water 
mark and below the point at which vegetation is likely to start. The ditches 
are placed from 50 to 200 feet apart, depending upon the character of the marsh, 
but more often 200 feet apart than less. 
Anticipating the ultimate passage of a State bill, work of this character was 
begun on the Shrewsbury River in 1902, and at the present time the marshes 
on both shores are drained in their full length. In 1903-4, the marsh areas 
