8 



Do you realize, gentlemen, what this means to the public? 

 It seems that one and three-quarter millions of people of New- 

 Jersey have been given a very considerable measure of protec- 

 tion against the mosquito, and at a cost of only $210,000, or a 

 per capita cost of about 12 cents. It means that although there 

 yet remains a large amount of drainage still to be done, that 

 the great centers of population which were formerly overrun 

 with mosquitoes are now pretty well protected, and as the work 

 advances and is pushed to completion this protection will grow 

 better and better from year to year. It means that our work in 

 this State has attracted such notice from scientific men and live 

 communities that it is being copied in many other States. They 

 are waking up to the importance of it. New York and Con- 

 necticut have gone actively about it in a limited way. The 

 South sees a way to rid itself of its scourge of malaria and 

 yellow fever, and the City of Toledo, Ohio, sent a delegation 

 last year all the way from that western city to this Convention 

 to gather information and knowledge of the problem. 



What of the future? We must go ahead. We cannot go 

 backward. What has been accomipHshed must be maintained. 

 Every community must keep forever at its local inspection work, 

 seeking all the time to make it a little more perfect in its results. 

 Perhaps the greatest problem yet remaining is to free the sea- 

 shore and rural communities of Southern New Jersey from the 

 mosquito incubus by the drainage of its vast stretches of salt- 

 marsh land. There are still 200,000 acres of this yet untouched. 

 When this is all. accomplished it must be systematically main- 

 tained year by year, or the last state may be worse than the first. 

 But when it can be said that the 296,000 acres of Jersey's marsh 

 land is thoroughly patrolled and free from salt-marsh mosqui- 

 toes, except in a negligible quantity, a day of happiness and 

 prosperity will have dawned which will only be marred by some 

 careless community allowing its local varieties of mosquito to 

 be a menace and a pest to themiselves. Fortunately local varie- 

 ties ordinarily do not get far from where they are born, and 

 can only worry the community that is negligent and unmindful 

 of its opportunities. 



