Vol. LXVII. No. 3056. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
NEW YORK, AUGUST 22, 1908. 
A STATE FIGHTS THE MOSQUITO. 
How the Marsh is Drained. 
Part II. 
The True ditching machine has made it possible 
to drain the Jersey meadows quickly and ecenomically. 
This machine at its best will do the work of 20 men, 
cutting in one day nearly one' mile of ditch 10 inches 
wide and 30 inches deep. It requires a crew of five 
men. One' can see at a glance, from its operation 
how the work is done, but it is hard to give a descrip¬ 
tion of it. Suppose you had a three-sided box of 
steel at the end of a heavy stick. You drive it down 
into the ground and then with a 
spade or .knife cut off the under side. 
You could then lift a cake of soil 
out. Pull this out and push the box 
into the soil next to the former hole 
and remove another cake, and so on, 
and you have a continuous ditch the 
width of the steel box and as deep 
as it is driven in. The True ditcher 
works on this principle. A gasoline 
engine furnishes the power which 
drives a stout bar down. At the end 
of this bar is a cutting box which is 
driven 30 inches into the marsh. Just 
at the right time another curved bar 
reaches down and shaves off the cake 
which the cutter has loosened. Then 
the bar comes up, bringing a chunk 
of the marsh weighing about 125 
pounds. This is pulled away with a 
hand fork, the machine is pushed 
ahead just far enough and down goes 
the cutter for another bite of soil. 
Planks are laid on the marsh for a 
track and it is pushed ahead by 
hand. Under the best conditions this 
machine will cut nearly a mile of 
ditch in a day of even width and true 
grade. In some places where short 
ditches are made or where the sur¬ 
face is badly cut up by cracks hand 
tools are used. These are worked 
by two men. Suppose you took two 
hay knives and welded them at each 
side of a piece of steel 10 inches 
wide so that the teeth were in front. 
Add a long handle. One man drives 
the point of this steel box into the 
marsh where the ditch is to be cut. 
Then both men put their feet on it 
and drive it into the ground as they 
would a spade. When they pull back 
on the handle these hay knife teeth 
cut through the marsh and slice off 
a chunk as deep and as wide as the 
tool is. This is drawn out, dumped 
to one side and the tool is driven in 
again as before. Two men with one 
of these tools will cut 500 feet of 
ditch in soil of this nature in the course of a day. 
A farmer will ask at once why these tools cannot 
be used on the farm for digging ordinary ditches. 
1 hey would fail because they are specially adapted 
to the marsh soil. There are no stones and the soil 
does not crumble, so that the machine can lift its 
bite without fear of having it break off. The marsh 
was originally under water. As it filled in and the 
fiats appeared above water vegetation began to cover 
it—very coarse at first but growing finer as the 
marsh became firmer. The coarse grasses form very 
heavy roots which run deep into the mud. They die 
down each year and new ones follow. With the 
constant addition of salt and without air, the condi¬ 
tions are not favorable to decay, so that a thick coat¬ 
ing of organic matter forms on top of the true mud 
and the surface of the march slowly rises. Prof. 
Smith describes the marsh and its soil in his bulletin : 
The upper layer, extending from 12 to 18 inches, is a 
huge sponge composed of a mass of roots and vegetable 
material. It is a real turf and may he used as such. In¬ 
deed, on some of the marshes, which have been ditched in 
the course of the mosquito work, the sods taken out of 
the ditches have been piled up. dried and used as fuel by 
the owners of the land. Like any other sponge, this turf 
holds water and dries out slowly by surface evaporation; 
but give it a chance, and it will give up its liquid readily. 
A ditch cut six inches below the turf line will drain out 
all tlie water for 100 feet on each side, slowly at first 
POOL CONTAINING OVER 10,000,000 MOSQUITOES. Fig. 297 
THE TRUE DITCHING MACHINE AT WORK. Fig. 298. 
until circulation lines have become established, but ever 
more readily until it finally runs out as through a sieve. 
Even a heavy rain leaves no trace, and when covered by a 
tide tlie water soaks out almost as fast as it can be 
carried off by the ditches. The deeper the ditch the better 
it acts. 
A chunk of soil pulled out by the True ditcher was 
analyzed at the Experiment Station by Dr. Lipman. 
This soil, 10x10x27 inches, weighed 121 pounds. It 
dried out to 23.30 pounds. The upper portion con¬ 
tained 34.33 per cent of organic matter and .65 per 
cent of nitrogen. While average stable manure con¬ 
tains .50 per cent, or less of nitrogen, of course this 
nitrogen would not compare in value with that in 
manure,; as it is not. available and the peat, is full 
of salt. The analysis shows, however, that this marsh 
soil may have great value in the future for producing 
crops. 
The New Jersey marsh is divided into three classes 
or types. A small area is covered by the ocean at 
every high tide. There is little danger in this from 
mosquitoes as they cannot breed there. Another 
part of the marsh is but a few inches above ordinary 
high tide so that wind, storms or moon changes will 
flood it. This is not dangerous mosquito ground, as it 
is covered with crabs, while the pools are stocked 
with fish which destroy the young mosquitoes 
wherever they can go. This part of the marsh is 
slowly rising. The third type of 
marsh, and the part which has kept 
Jerseymen fighting mosquitoes is 
the part above tide water—so far 
that fish and crabs arc not brought 
to the pools regularly. All such 
marsh is covered by the highest 
tides and by heavy storms, and this 
incoming water fills the poo's and 
starts mosquito breeding. Where 
the marsh is broad it may be higher 
at the creek or stream through 
which the tide flows and lower 
where it joins the higher land. This 
dishing shape at the back of the 
marsh makes an ideal breeding 
place for mosquitoes, as the water 
flows into it from the tide and re¬ 
mains there unless drained out. The 
greatest care must be taken to reach 
these low places and take off the 
water. 
This system of thorough drainage 
is the backbone of New Jersey’s 
fight against mosquitoes. No oil is 
used on the marsh pools, but entire 
dependence is placed on perfect 
drainage and leveling the “rotten” 
places—that is “spots where the 
marsh surface has begun to decay. 
Oil is useful in .some cases, as we 
shall see later, ' but Prof. Smith 
says that some people have done just 
the wrong thing with it. They put 
it on ponds that were well-stocked 
with fish which were getting all the 
young mosquitoes, and the oil killed 
the fish. 
I believe that New Jersey never 
put up a dollar which will eventually 
bring greater returns than the money 
spent in this mosquito campaign. 
Owing to the State's peculiar shape 
no other has a problem exactly like 
it. I am confident that a few years 
more will show such evident results 
that all over the country there will 
be a movement to kill off mosqui¬ 
toes. The day before I visited the 
marsh there was a high tide which filled the pools and 
low places where mosquito eggs were waiting. With¬ 
in 24 hours these places were alive with ‘“wigglers” 
and where the water remains a week millions of mos¬ 
quitoes will arise' and go to business. The ditches 
ran off millions of them, but where the ditches are 
not dug a large brood will hatch. The high tide 
flooded all the marsh along the Jersey shore. Where 
the ditches are dug no wigglers can be found, while 
on the undrained meadows there are billions of them. 
At first, in New Jersey, considerable ridicule was 
heaped upon the movement, but when the plan and 
the life history of the insect are made clear any sen¬ 
sible person can see what it will mean to the State. 
