Proceedings of Sixth Annual Meeting 



49 



July 5, Superintendent Johnson reported a considerable area 

 of breeding in the marshes at Seaside Heights, which were found 

 to contain insufficient ditches to remove water promptly enough. 

 . Ditching was immediately commenced, but a large number of mos- 

 quitoes got on the wing by the 8th. We consider these marshes 

 now safe from further breeding. 



On August 15, high tides resulted in some breeding in the 

 vicinity of Tuckerton on the undrained meadows. The consequent 

 flight was bad locally, but nothing like "old times." 



The next flight worthy of note was September 24, in the Tucker- 

 ton district, and was easily traced to the undrained meadows to the 

 southward, and while worse than the one of August 15, was mainly 

 local in extent, not extending beyond Manahawkin. 



The weather conditions of November and December of 1917 per- 

 mitted us to work with little interruption until December 28. The 

 work done was mainly spurring or connecting the larger ditches 

 made by contractors' machines with the salt ponds and depressions 

 with the smaller ones, 7 by 18 inches. This work, when done by 

 us, costs about one cent per foot, whereas if the contractor did it, 

 it would be at his unit price per foot or $0.0218. 



Work for the calendar year 1918 was commenced March 7, when 

 a force averaging ten men started in with cleaning. This was con- 

 tinued until May 30, when the whole county was covered. This 

 means that over 300 miles of ditches were completely inspected 

 and obstructions removed when found. 



On our meadows are many large ditches dug to drain the space 

 near the upland. These we call "farmers' ditches" and they usually 

 are skillfully planned, but owing to the decline of farming interest, 

 have been neglected. We find that opening up the original in many 

 cases is all that is required to completely take care of bad breeding 

 grounds. 7,166 feet of such ditches were opened during the spring 

 of 1918. On account of caving and filling it was also necessary 

 to recut 7,370 feet of old ditches. The total cost of this cleaning 

 and recutting of 304 miles of ditches was $800.00, or $2.63 per 

 mile. 84 miles of ditches cut during the previous year are still 

 under the responsibility of contractors. 



The Board . of Freeholders having again appropriated the sum 

 of $10,000 for mosquito extermination for the year 1918, we 



