Proceedings of Eighth Annual Meeting 57 



was a stream of water shot above the surface of the bay eight or 

 ten inches. 



Therefore we decided to leave off the screens and we have left 

 off the screens, and in spite of the seaweed, in spite of the flood- 

 ing up of our sand gate, that trunk has been working there from that 

 time to this, and it looks as if we have in that trunk a method of 

 operating those gates which will stay open and which will provide 

 adequate drainage. (Applause). 



President Rider : Now we will skip over Burlington County 

 I see nothing here from Burlington County. I think Burlington 

 County is responsible for a good many mosquitoes up in the neighbor- 

 hood of Ocean County. The next one is Atlantic, represented by 

 Dr. Darnall. I don't think he needs any introduction to this audi- 

 ence. 



Dr. William E. Darnall : Gentlemen, Atlantic County is very 

 glad to be your hosts again on this delightful occasion, always glad 

 to see you. 



We began the year thinking very seriously of some way to in- 

 crease our efficiency, some way to cut our ditches a little faster and 

 get along over the fifty thousand acres from which the drainage had 

 to be removed. 



After thinking over the subject very carefully and realizing that 

 our old cutter and pur old ditching machines plugged along slowly, 

 Mr. Reiley took some tests and found that we were losing about one- 

 third of our time shifting machines around and pulling cutters out 

 of the ground, etc. It took about five men to get our cutters out 

 of the ground and stick it in again. It took some little time — it 

 took fifteen minutes — took some little time to shift around the 

 stationary engine and pull it by its own power from place to place. 



So the first development was to improve that cutting plow to 

 some extent and put improvements on it so it would pull itself out 

 of the ground, and we did not need the men. He constructed a de- 

 vice to accompHsh this, and now since the plow is finished it has 

 got this A shaped affair raised up and coupled up for it to pull out 

 and put in again, and it saves a great deal of time. 



Well, then, the second thing that we had on our minds was to do 

 something to get along a little faster. We did not think our old 

 stationary engines were getting along as fast as we could get along. 

 And we began to investigate the tractor situation. We had tests 

 made of various tractors and finally decided on a tractor which with 

 certain modifications we thought would work. That was put 



