Proceedings of Seventh Annual Meeting 27 



quito fighters in existence today — that your operations are on a 

 larger scale and are being conducted in a more intelligent and re- 

 sourceful way than in any other region. I myself am perfectly 

 convinced of all this. At the height of the season last summer I 

 v^^ent over a large portion of your field from Hoboken on the north 

 to Atlantic City on the south with Dr. Headlee and some of your 

 leading officials, and I was simply amazed at the results that have 

 been accomplished and the surprisingly low cost of the operations. 

 You are proving to the whole country and to the rest of the world 

 that, under the most difficult conditions, the mosquito scourge can 

 be controlled, and if you do not teach this great lesson to the rest 

 of the United States and induce at least some of them to follow your 

 example it will be because their officials are too stupid or too stub- 

 born to learn or too poverty-stricken to act. 



There is one point, however, in all this anti-mosquito work that 

 must be borne in mind by organizations undertaking it on a large 

 scale, and that is the vital importance of expert entomological advice. 

 While it is true that the habits and methods of life of the principal 

 malaria-carrying mosquitoes and of the single yellow-fever mos- 

 quito are fairly well known by all practical mosquito fighters, yet in 

 this country and wherever the end to be obtained is peace and com- 

 fort and the improvement of living conditions, the exact life round 

 of every species of mosquito concerned must be known in order to 

 avoid much possible waste effort and expense. And this knowledge 

 must be gained from expert and carefully trained entomologists. In 

 this country the extraordinary variation in breeding places among 

 the different species was early appreciated by the entomologists, 

 and the experts of other lands have been finding out the same thing, 

 as you will note from my earlier reference to the work of Galli- 

 Valerio and Rochaz de Jongh in Europe and of Macfie and Ingram 

 in Africa. The work you are doing now in New Jersey is based 

 almost entirely on the early scientific investigations of the late John 

 B. Smith, whose discoveries as to the exact biology of the salt-marsh 

 mosquitoes were revolutionary and of supreme importance. Only 

 last summer many thousands of dollars were probably wasted in a 

 northwestern state as the result of a misconception as to the exact 

 species of mosquito which was swarming in incredible numbers. You 

 in New Jersey are fortunate in having Doctor Headlee with you. 

 More entomologists must be trained in the biology and taxonomy of 

 the one hundred or more North American species of mosquitoes, 



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