39 



they do us very little good, and they do very little towards re- 

 lieving the community from mosquitoes unless those ditches are 

 made efficient and kept efficient from year to year and main- 

 tained from year to year. And we would like to have a very 

 full and very free discussion of that particular thing. 



Mr. Judd — May I ask a question ? No one has made a state- 

 ment yet as to about how many thousand feet or hundreds of 

 miles of ditches have been cut in the State of New Jersey. You 

 said there were about 296,000 acres of salt marshes in New 

 Jersey. 



Dr. Hi:adi.je:e^ — Approximately 11,500,000 feet of narrow 

 trenching, or its equivalent, has been placed in the marshes of 

 the State. When we are through with this scheme we will have 

 not far from 60,000,000 feet. We have gone far enough already 

 with 11,500,000 feet that we realize that the next problem i; 

 something to clean these ditches mechanically. 



We should not make the mistake of thinking that we have to 

 clean all of these 11,500,000 feet every year. The amount of 

 ditching which we have to clean every third year probably doe^ 

 not exceed forty per cent, of the total. Sixty per cent, of that 

 which has been cut has been so cut that there is a tidal suck 

 which keeps them clean, requiring no attention excepting th- 

 removal of blockage and the shearing down of the sides as the 

 upper edges tend to grow together. 



I feel that the cleaning problem may easily be overestimated, 

 and I wish to make as clear as I can that probably not over 

 forty per cent, of our ditching will require that cleaning which 

 has been described, and that that will not come more than once 

 in three years. I know ditches that are twelve years old at least 

 that are running perfectly and draining with entire satisfaction. 

 Nothing has ever been done to those ditches save to remove 

 blockage and in some cases to trim the edges. 



Mr. Dobbins— There is in storage in Newark at the present 

 time a machine which has been sent on from Cincinnati. I went 

 over the meadows with a representative of this company, and so 

 satisfied was he that his machine would clean those ditches that 



