14 Proceedings oe Ninth Annual Meeting 



were carried in on the clothing to equalize things, and a canopy- 

 covered bed was a luxury supplied by very few. I know a cap- 

 tain who was induced to buy one of these canopies, and he often 

 told of his first night's experience with it. He turned in happy 

 and hopeful, but soon he had a bite, then another, and he said 

 when all the mosquitoes got inside he got out and laid on the 

 floor. Another night he took a hammer and clinched the bills as 

 they poked through the canopy. I was talking to an old visitor 

 to Bonds Long Beach House, which was the very first place to 

 receive guests on this section of the coast, and he said there were 

 no screens up to 1868. Think of it! He said they used to go 

 around the halls with a smudge of grass, burning on a shovel to 

 distract the insects' hungry impulses. Of course there were things 

 that went on in some of these early hotels that helped some, so 

 that the first part of the night the sleeper was sO' occupied with 

 what he had taken before he went to bed that he did not mind the 

 mosquitoes, and the rest of the night the apathy, or whatever it 

 was, was transferred to the mosquitoes, so they got a good night's 

 sleep after all. But the total abstainer just had to grin and bear it. 



A person will stand being annoyed better when in pursuit of 

 anything than pleasure and when the increasing number of 

 visitors to our shores were bitten just as they were having a 

 good time it made a wonderful and lasting impression, and he 

 would tell his friends when he got home of how he was nearly 

 ''devoured" at this, that or the other place in New Jersey. So 

 that is how and why so many American citizens think of New 

 Jersey's emblem as a mosquito rampant instead of the three 

 peaceful plows our forefathers adopted. 



I know of one hotel not far from a railroad on one of our 

 beaches where the hotel proprietor would appear at the station 

 with a large straw hat covered with mosquito netting and draped 

 over his. shoulders, which would lead the visitor to inquire im- 

 mediately when the next train left for home. Neither the hotel 

 or its proprietor was ever prosperous. 



There was once built a hotel by ofificials of the Pennsylvania 

 Railroad Company called Berkeley Arms about 1885. It was 

 one of the finest of the coast at that time and was at the end of 

 a railroad to New York and one to Philadelphia and had the 

 backing of the great company. There was a good beach and a 

 magnificent bay behind it, yet it failed absolutely for no other 

 reason than the guests would not stand the mosquitoes. It has 

 since burned to the ground, but since that time the effective work 

 of mosquito extermination in Ocean County has made it possible 

 to create the two resorts of Seaside Park and Seaside Heights on 



