Marshes and their Effects on Human Health. 55 
MARSHES AND THEIR EFFECTS ON HUMAN HEALTH. 
BY WILLIAM BACON. 
I have recently noticed a valuable article on " marshes and 
their effects on human health," taking the rounds of the press, 
and appearing to have originated in your valuable periodical. 
Facts corroborative of the assertions of that article, are so freshly 
dated in my recollection, and so mournfully impressed on the minds 
and yet bleeding hearts of many in this community, that it appears 
to me proper to throw them into the same channel, that perchance 
the tide may bear them onward, so that they may contribute to 
the protection and preservation of human life. 
In the outset, it may be convenient for the reader to become 
acquainted with our geographical and geological features. First, 
then, we are situated on the western line of Massachusetts, with 
the Taconic hills on our western boundary. These hills, from the 
gap where the western rail road passes them, rise as you pass 
northward, until it reaches an elevation of more than 2000 feet 
above tide-water, and about 1000 feet above the level of the rail 
road. The streams that rise from this hill, mostly take a south- 
easterly direction, and their course is marked with ravines as is 
usual along mountain streams. Half a mile north of the Con- 
gregational church, one of the deepest of these ravines opens into 
the valley, and from its debouchure the mountain widens to the 
east. Still further north, at about the same distance, it makes 
another offset, and yet another from Lebanon gap, where its 
southern front makes an east-north-east direction. Lenox moun- 
tain is our eastern boundary, and its general course is a south-west 
direction. So it will be seen, that our only outlets are formed by 
narrow valleys on the north-east and south-west. Lenox moun- 
tain is abrupt on its western surface; the Taconic passes down in 
a more gradual slope, so that cultivation is carried to its summit. 
On the eastern borders of the town, lands convenient for tillage 
are higher than corresponding lands in the w^est part, by some forty 
or fifty feet. Thus described, our territory presents the form of a 
