The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6) — John Shaqi
The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6)
Science
The Home Medical Library, Volume 5 (of 6)
Medicine; Medicine, Popular
The salt marsh lying within the limits of the city of Newark covers an
area of about 3,500 acres. It extends from a point on the Passaic
River to the mouth of Bound Creek, where it empties into Newark Bay.
Its length is about eight miles and it has an extreme width of three
miles. The Newark marsh problem was a very complex one. The meadows
are cut into many sections by the several traversing railroads and by
creeks; this materially influences the drainage. The Peddie Street
sewer crosses the marsh in a straight line of about three miles from
the city to the bay. This sewer is twenty feet wide, and its banks are
from three to four feet above the marsh land.
An experiment with machine ditching was made in 1903. The worst parts
of the marsh were selected, and about 40,000 feet of ditches were cut.
These ditches were six inches wide, two feet deep, and the drainage
was perfect from the outset. The section of meadow thus drained became
so dry in consequence that the grass growing there can now be cut by a
machine in summer, whereas formerly the hay could be mown only in
winter. The work was so successful that the Newark Common Council
appropriated $5,000 to complete the mosquito drainage of the marsh.
Of the results obtained up to this spring, Dr. Smith says:
"This Newark marsh problem was an unusual one, and one that would not
be likely to recur in the same way at any other point along the coast.
Nevertheless, of the entire 3,500 acres of marsh, not 100 acres remain
on which there is any breeding whatever, and that is dangerous only in
a few places and under certain abnormal conditions. Including old
ditches cleaned out, about 360,000 running feet of ditches have been
dug on the Newark marshes, partly by machine and partly by hand, and
if the work is not entirely successful, that is due to the defects
which were not included in the drainage scheme. It is a safe
prediction, I think, that Newark will have no early brood of
mosquitoes in 1905, comparable with the invasions of 1903 and 1904."
This prophecy has proved true.
_The Campaign on Long Island_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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