SMUDGES.
Dried ordure is generally used for smudges, to drive away insects; the Indians of the Great Plains beyond the Missouri burned the “chips” of the buffalo with this object.
The natives of the White Nile “make tumuli of dung which are constantly on fire, fresh fuel being added constantly, to drive away the mosquitoes.”—(“The Albert Nyanza,” Baker, p. 53.)
“When they burn it (the dung of a camel) the smoke which proceeds from it destroys Gnats and all kinds of vermin.”—(Chinese recipes given in Du Halde’s “History of China,” vol. iv. p. 34.)
Schweinfurth describes the Shillooks of the west bank of the Nile as “burning heaps of cow-dung to keep off the flies.”—(“Heart of Africa,” vol. i. p. 16. See also “Central Africa,” Chaillé Long, New York, 1877, p. 215.)
Such smudges were employed by the Arabians to kill bed-bugs. “Effugatione Cimicum” effected by a “suffumigium” of “stercore vaccino.”—(“Avicenna,” vol. ii. p. 214, a 47.)
Rev. James Gilmour describes a mode of extinguishing a burning tent, observed among the Mongols, the counterpart of which is to be found in “Gulliver’s Travels.”—(See “Among the Mongols,” p. 23.)
Lucius Cataline, accused by Marcus Cicero of raising a flame in the city of Rome, “I believe it,” said he, “and, if I cannot extinguish it with water, I will with urine.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” cap. “Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 22.)