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76 N. J. Mosquito Extermination Association 



who are carrying on some plantation work in Louisiana, send up a 

 paper, and they were unable to come themselves but sent their 

 paper, which concerns one, especially, of the very interesting pro- 

 blems. 



Five or six years ago I gave a talk about the initiation of this 

 experiment. Down in the south repeatedly, in the richest part of the 

 south, which is the delta region of Louisiana and Mississippi, where 

 the soil is richer, probably, than in any other part of the world except 

 possibly the delta of the Nile, the great obstacle is malaria, and the 

 planters down there have realized for a good many years that there 

 is an enormous economic loss from malaria among their laborers. 

 Now we have gone into a large plantation to see if we can find out 

 exactly what the economic loss is and how it may be abolished. We 

 worked on that for some years. And this paper of Drs. Van Dine 

 and King deals with one particular phase of this question. I shall read 

 only two or three pages of this manuscript and hope that you will 

 find it interesting enough to pay you to read it, so that you can get 

 the details better than I can give you in this short time. 



Dr. L. O. Howard: In connection with a general study of the 

 biology of malaria mosquitoes on a plantation in the lower Missis- 

 sippi valley, a large number of collections of adult Anopheles have 

 been made over a period of several years (1914-1920). The fol- 

 lowing report is an analysis of these data to show the average abun- 

 dance of malaria mosquitoes in the typical rural community and 

 among the class of residents most affected by the disease. No at- 

 tempt is made in this paper to compare the abundance of Anop- 

 heles with local breeding conditions, or with any other contributing 

 factors that influence abundance. 



The collections were made on a plantation located at Mound in 

 north-east Louisiana. In this plantation there are approximately 

 1800 acres of open land of which 1200 acres are in cultivation 

 under the negro tenant system of labor. Cotton is the principal 

 crop grown with corn secondary. The remaining 600 acres of 

 open land is devoted to pasture and hay with some cotton grown 

 on the day-wage system of labor which is drawn from the tenant 

 class. There is an average of 69 tenant families on the plantation 

 with a tenant population of 296 persons, giving an average of 4.26 

 persons per family. Each family cultivates an average of 17.4 

 acres of land. The tenant houses are scattered over the plantation 

 in typical rural fashion, each tenant being located on the land 

 assigned to him for cultivation. The open land is intersected by 



