Vermin, Destroying
Vermin, Destroying.—Before proceeding to classify the various kinds of noxious creatures whose presence is objectionable to man, and giving hints for their destruction or removal, it will be well to put forward a word of caution against using any substance which will poison the vermin in situations where their bodies can putrefy unseen and produce unpleasant and injurious odours. Wherever poisons are mentioned in the following recipes their use is intended exclusively away from the dwelling, and there are many sound reasons why poisons should be avoided on all occasions.
Insects.—As this word is commonly used in the household it embraces a considerable number of small creatures outside the class known as insects to naturalists, and may be regarded as including all winged and creeping vermin.
Before descending to special remedies against different insects a few lines may be devoted to that universal insecticide the so-called “Persian insect powder.” This is of two kinds, one produced in the Transcaucasian region and another in Dalmatia. The first is the produce of Pyrethrum roseum and P. carneum, and the last of P. cinerariæfolium [Chrysanthemum turreanum], all common wild flowers in their special districts. The useful part of the plants is their flowers, which are gathered when half developed, in dry weather, dried in the shade under cover, ground to powder, and stored in air-tight vessels. The plants can be cultivated in warm climates. The Dalmatian gives the stronger powder, or perhaps the powder sold there is less adulterated. Experiments have conclusively proved that while these powders are perfectly harmless to human beings and domestic animals, they are distinctly poisonous to all insects having open mouth parts, such as bees, wasps, ants, mosquitoes, flies, fleas, bugs, dragon-flies, spiders, carpet-beetles, &c.
Ants.—(a) White ants will eat the whole timber work of a house without noise. They bore close to the surface of the wood, but without destroying it, so that there is no visible indication of what they are doing. They will even bore through the boards of a floor and up the legs of a table, leaving the latter a mere shell. The principal woods used in this country which are said to resist the white ant are cedar, greenheart, ebony, and lignum vitæ, and the heartwood of jarrah. Pitch pine is sometimes attacked. White ants will not attack new teak, but will bore through teak to get at yellow pine. Arsenic seems to prevent the attack of these insects, and is sometimes used for this purpose in the concrete, mortar, paint, and plaster of buildings. Arsenic is also mixed with aloes, soap, &c., to form a wash to exterminate these insects. Creosoting is an effectual preservative against white ants, but on account of its smell is only adapted for out-door work, and can hardly be applied to very dense tropical timbers. A cheap source of arsenic for this purpose is the lime arsenite residue from aniline dyeworks.
(b) Black Ants.—Scatter a few leaves of green wormwood about their haunts. (c) To clear them from pantries, chalk the shelves upon which the provisions are put, so that the ants cannot move about; or apply moistened fly-paper and lay about the pantry; or apply quassia tincture, and soak crumbs of bread with it, and lay it about the pantry. (d) Leave a vessel, such as a butter-crock, containing at the bottom a few stewed prunes, or a little water in which prunes have been stewed, uncovered in the places frequented by the ants; it will attract them, and thousands will drown in it. (e) Boil pieces of string in beer and sugar, and lay them in the ants’ way; collect once in 24 hours, when they will be found covered with ants, and drop into boiling water. (f) Pour benzoline down the holes. (g) Pour boiling water down the holes. (h) Rooms on a ground floor may be cleared by carefully pouring some strong oil of vitriol down each hole. This will be fatal to the living insects and all their eggs, but will destroy flooring, plaster, and bricks wherever it touches.
(i) Red Ants.—Grease a plate with lard, and set it where the insects abound. They prefer lard to anything else, and will forsake sugar for it. Place a few sticks around the plate for the ants to climb up on. Occasionally turn the plate bottom up over the fire, and the ants will fall in with the melting lard. Reset the plate, and in a short time you will catch them all.
Blackbeetles.—(a) Keep a hedgehog. (b) Set a deep dish or earthen pan, containing a little sugared beer by way of attraction; it will entrap the insects in vast numbers, if a few pieces of wood are inclined against the sides to serve as ladders. They will tumble in when they reach the edge, and the glazed sides will prevent their getting out. (c) Immediately before bedtime, strew the floor of those parts of the house most infested with the vermin with the green peel, cut not very thin, from the cucumber. (d) A mixture of Persian insect powder and powdered wormseed, thrown about where they frequent. (e) Use powdered borax, about ½ lb. to each room. It requires perseverance and care in its use. It should be scattered about freely wherever they congregate, and particularly in cracks and crevices where they can hide from it. It may be blown or forced by the blade of a knife into narrow cracks. The effect of the borax is to cause them to emigrate. It may kill a few, which will be found afterwards in a dried withered up condition lying about on the floor. They may be swept up without injury to carpets or furniture.
Bugs.—The following are paste poisons:—(a) 1 oz. mercurial ointment, ¼ oz. corrosive sublimate, ¼ oz. Venetian red. (b) Soft soap and cayenne pepper. (c) Soft soap and corrosive sublimate. (d) Soft soap and strong snuff. The following are washes for furniture or floors:—(a) A small quantity (6d. worth) salts of wormwood, dissolved in a bucket of hot writer. (b) Solution of pyroligneous acid, arsenite of potash, decoction of oak bark, and garlic. (c) 2 dr. corrosive sublimate, 8 oz. spirits of wine rubbed in mortar till dissolved, then add ½ pint spirits of turpentine. (d) 1 lb. each sal ammoniac, and corrosive sublimate, 8 gal. hot water. (e) 1½ oz. camphor, 8 oz. each spirits of turpentine and spirits of wine. (f) Weak solution of zinc chloride. (g) Benzine. (h) Equal parts spirits of turpentine and kerosene. Application:—(a) The room must be thoroughly cleared; take the bed and bedclothes into the open air, and beat them thoroughly; take the bedstead to pieces, and after a thorough purification with hot water, plug every hole and crevice with one of the pastes given above; stop all cracks, &c., in the floor and walls with the paste also. (b) Empty the room; scrape off all paper and burn immediately on the spot in charcoal brazier; fill all cracks in plaster, paint, and wormwood with a poison paste; scent the floor with a wash; burn all old scraps of carpet.
Crickets.—(a) Half fill some jampots with water and set at night. (b) A covered box with perforated lid containing a little salt or oatmeal.
Earwigs.—Place lengths of hollow bean-stalk or other tube where the insects collect, and each morning empty them into boiling water by blowing sharply through.
Fleas.—In Beds.—(a) Sprinkle chamomile flowers in the bed. (b) Use young leaves of wild myrtle in the same way. (c) Strew fresh mint under the beds. (d) Have walnut leaves about the person. (e) Place a piece of new flannel in the bed, and there seek the vermin. (f) Sprinkle the bed or night dress with a little solution of camphor in spirits of wine. (g) Sponge your person with camphor water-¼ oz. camphor, ½ oz. tincture of myrrh in 1 qt. water, shake well before use.
In Rooms.—(a) Slice a strong onion and rub the bottom edge of the trousers. The favourite point of attack is at the ankles and the legs up to the knee; they do not jump so much from above. (b) Make a strong decoction of laurel leaves by filling a large copper with the leaves, adding as much water as possible, and boil for 4 or 5 hours. Then take the leaves away, and deluge the floors with the boiling hot liquor. The liquor will but very slightly discolour the ceilings, which can be whitened again.
On Animals.—(a) Oil of pennyroyal will certainly drive them off; but a cheaper method, where the herb flourishes, is to dip dogs and cats into a decoction of it once a week. Mow the herb and scatter it in the beds of pigs once a month. Where the herb cannot be got, the oil may be procured. In this case, saturate strings with it and tie them around the necks of dogs and cats, pour a little on the back and about the ears of hogs, which you can do while they are feeding, without touching them. By repeating these applications every 12 or 15 days, the fleas will leave the animals. Strings saturated with the oil of pennyroyal, and tied around the neck and tail of horses, will drive off lice; the strings should be saturated once a day. (b) Equal parts ox-gall, oil of camphor, oil of pennyroyal, extract of gentian, spirits of wine; wash.
Flies.—In Rooms.—(a) A castor-oil plant growing in the room kills many and drives away the rest. (b) A bunch of walnut leaves keeps them out. (c) A large, handsome Japanese lily (Lilium auratum) behaves like the castor-oil plant. (d) Soak blotting-paper in a solution of sugar of lead, and sweeten with molasses. (e) Mix treacle, moist sugar, or honey with 1/12 of orpiment. (f) Boil ¼ oz. of quassia chips in 1 pint water for 10 minutes; strain; add 4 oz. molasses. (g) Spread laurel oil on picture frames, curtains, &c. (h) When going to bed, blow some Persian or Dalmatian insect powder into the air of the room and close it for the night; burn the dust swept from the room in the morning.
On Animals.—(a) Procure a bunch of smartweed, and bruise it to cause the juice to exude. Rub the animal thoroughly with the bunch of bruised weed, especially on the legs, neck, and ears. Neither flies nor other insects will trouble him for 24 hours. The process should be repeated every day. A very convenient way of using it, is to make a strong infusion by boiling the weed a few minutes in water. When cold it can be conveniently applied with a sponge or brush. Smartweed is found growing in every section of the country in the United States, usually on wet ground near highways. (b) Scatter lime chloride on a board in the stable or pen.
Harvest Bugs.—Smear the legs all over with (a) Decoction of colocynth; (b) strong vinegar; (c) paraffin; (d) thick soap lather; (e) tincture of iodine; (f) benzine; (g) tar ointment (h) 1 oz. insect powder (Dalmatian) macerated in 1 oz. weak spirit, and then diluted with 2½ oz. water.
Mosquitoes and Gnats.—To keep them away from the person:—(a) 1 oz. each olive oil and oil of tar, ½ oz. each glycerine, spirit of camphor, and oil of pennyroyal, 2 dr. carbolic acid; mix and shake well before use. (b) Sponge with 1 oz. camphor dissolved in 1 qt. cold water. (c) Dissolve as much camphor as possible in olive or castor oil, boil down the oil to half, and smear on the face and hands. (d) Mix 3 oz. olive oil, 2 oz. oil of pennyroyal, 1 oz. glycerine, 1 oz. ammonia; shake well; apply, avoiding the eyes. (e) Rub lime juice on the skin. (f) Essential oil of lemon. (g) Rub with bruised laurel leaves. (h) Dust the face and hands with potato flour. (i) Vaseline or petroleum ointment. (j) Rub on 4 oz. glycerine, 4 dr. oil of turpentine, 2½ dr. oil of spearmint. (k) Hang a piece of camphor in a muslin bag from the topmost coat button-hole. (l) Dissolve in a cupful of water as much alum as the water will contain—in other words, make the strongest solution possible of alum and water; add ⅓ proportion of aromatic vinegar, and ¼ of glycerine; keep it in small flat phials convenient for the pocket, and apply it constantly during the day. Rae mentions that he does not believe without its alleviating influence he would have been able to carry out his journey in Lapland, so severe were the attacks of these insect pests.
Driving from Bedstead.—Hang on the bedstead: (a) a few bruised leaves of pennyroyal; (b) a sponge dipped in camphorated spirit; (c) a bunch of elder; (d) a bunch of wormwood; (e) a bough of ash.
Driving from Room.—Burn: (a) Camphor in a tin dish over a candle so that it evaporates without igniting; (b) cow-dung; (c) wormwood; (d) juniper wood sawdust.
Moths.—Numerous opinions have been expressed from time to time as to the most effective means of preventing the ravages of the larva of the “clothes-moth.” The most practical may be summarised as follows. (a) When the number of garments or other fabrics is small an efficient plan is found to be to keep them exposed to the air and liable to constant disturbance, with occasional shaking and beating. (b) One writer finds it a very good plan to put winter things, such as curtains, furs, heavy shawls, dresses, extra blankets, &c., away in wine cases, papered inside and out with newspaper; when nailed down, every crack or crevice is pasted over. This should be done in April, before any moths are about; the clothes are then safe. Other articles which cannot well be packed away for the summer, such as dress-coats, are quite safe if folded in plenty of sound newspaper. (c) Another states that articles put away for 5 years in a warehouse were perfectly uninjured in all cases where they were completely wrapped in linen, while every part not thus protected was more or less destroyed by moth. (d) One experimenter placed 4 moths in the balance, and found that they weighed 2¾ gr. They were then placed in a watch-glass, and dried over the steam of boiling water. There remained ·830 gr., say 30 per cent., or, in other terms, if 100 lb. of the grubs were dried they would lose 70 lb. or 7 gal. of water (and this is exclusive of what the insect must have lost in perspiration and other animal functions). The remedy which suggested itself was, that if we could render our garments absolutely dry, even if the mother moth should deposit her eggs, they could not grow or live in the absolute absence of moisture; and that if we could place our garments for a short time, during the moth season, May and June, in a close chamber, heated by steam pipes to the boiling point, aided by a little chloride of calcium, on trays to absorb moisture, the necessary conditions would be met; and even if the mother moth had succeeded in depositing her eggs before the hot chamber process had been applied, it would still prove effective, as the eggs would be hard-boiled and rendered unproductive. Possibly if drying ovens were kept available at a small charge, they would find extensive employ, as the losses incurred by dealers in furs is immense; and in private families for the treatment of clothing, blankets, and other articles they would be of great value. (e) The use of a vacuum and hot gases has been under experiment by the Government of the United States. It is believed that a large cylinder of boiler iron may be filled with woollen goods, either cloth or made-up garments, in unbroken bales or boxes; the top screwed on air-tight; the air exhausted by an air-pump worked by the steam engine, and the vacuum filled after a sufficient time to kill all active developed moths and grubs, with air which has passed through a stove filled with ignited charcoal or anthracite coal. This atmosphere will contain no supporter of respiration; it consists of nitrogen, carbonic acid, and carbonic oxide, and some watery vapour, with a little sulphur and traces of other volatile impurities contained in the fuel. The carbonic oxide is a violent poison. The other gases named are all either inert, unable to support life, or positively noxious. They will penetrate under the pressure of 15 lb. to the sq. in. into every nook and cranny between the folds of the goods, and into every empty pore of the woollen fibres themselves. They can be introduced at such a temperature as may be determined to be best and sufficient. Experiments at Nottingham reported in the Journal of Applied Science show, if correctly performed, that woollen goods may be exposed for 3 hours to an atmosphere in a close vessel heated to 250°F. (121°C.) without injury, and that even 295°F. (146°C.) is not seriously injurious to the fibre, though it changes the colours of some goods. One difficulty in caring for great quantities of these goods is the labour and exposure incident to opening packages, taking out to handle separately each article, exposing it after brushing to the attacks of the moths, always ready for action at the only season when this overhauling is needed. (f) The larva of the clothes-moth will only attack and devour substances that immediately serve it for food, and will not gnaw through the most flimsy envelope, provided this is not edible. But still in these the most careful folding will fail to keep them out, as the tiny hatchlings will find their way through the seams; these should be pasted together, but as the insects are particularly fond of paste this should be poisoned either with a little corrosive sublimate or by triturating some camphor with it. Moths will never eat through brown paper. This must be of the right sort, i.e. made from old tarred ropes, and smelling of tar. Larvæ of clothes-moths, if they can get at nothing else, will feed on ordinary paper if kept in a damp place. The protection of the wrappers consists in their coarse tarry nature. (g) Dust the articles with alum dried to a cinder and powdered. (h) Mix 2 oz. snuff, 4 oz. cedar sawdust, 1 oz. black pepper, 1 oz. camphor, 1 dr. lupulin (hop flowers), and blow it into corners with a powder bellows. (i) Soak blotting-paper in a mixture of oil of camphor and spirits of turpentine, and lay it among the goods. (j) Prof. Riley says that the early days of June should herald vigorous and exterminating warfare against these subtle pests. Closets, wardrobes, all receptacles for clothing, should be emptied and laid open, their contents thoroughly exposed to light and air, and well brushed and shaken before being replaced. In old houses much infested with moths all cracks in floors, wainscots, shelves, or furniture, should be brushed over with spirits of turpentine. Camphor or tobacco should be placed among all garments, furs, plumes, &c., when laid aside for the summer. To secure cloth linings of carriages from the attacks of moths, sponge them on both sides with a solution of corrosive sublimate of mercury in alcohol, made just strong enough not to leave a white mark on a black feather. Moths may be killed by fumigating the article containing them with tobacco or sulphur, or by putting it, if practicable, into an oven heated to about 150° F. (k) Nothing is better than Mikado moth papers (Fleming, 101 Leadenhall St., E.C.), placed between folds of the articles to be protected, and occasionally renewed.
Poultry Lice.—(a) Damp the skin beneath the feathers and dust on powdered sulphur. (b) Scatter male persimon leaves on the floor of the house, or wash the house with a decoction of the leaves. (c) Thoroughly lime-white the house, adding sulphur to the lime.
Slugs and Snails.—Lay salt on the trails.
Wasps.—(a) Put pulverised commercial potassium cyanide, one or two tablespoonfuls, into the entrance of the nest without disturbing it or the insects; they enter never to return. (b) At noon, or soon after, when the insects are abroad in search of food, fumigate the hole with sulphur; dig out the comb and destroy everything in it; then place a wine bottle, half full of water, in the hole, leaving the mouth of the bottle within an inch of the surface of the surrounding earth; on taking it up next morning, you will find every one of that family safe in the trap. (c) Pour some tar into and around the nest and ignite it; take care to have the head and hands covered with gauze. (d) Spread arsenic and the dust of loaf sugar (1 to 20) on pieces of orange peel out of the reach of children. (e) Hang bottles containing treacle and water in the plum trees and other resorts, and examine daily.
Rats.—(a) Mix together 8 oz. strong cheese and 2 oz. powdered squills, and place in their haunts and runs. It acts immediately, and the rats die instantly; whereas most of the pastes, &c., allow the animals to retire into their holes, where their subsequent death and putrefaction may cause great inconvenience from effluvia. (b) Make a strong solution of copperas water, and paint the walls of the whole cellar, then pound up copperas, and scatter it along the sides of the walls and into every hole where it can be thrown. (c) In the runs and holes, lay a mixture of tar and broken glass. (d) Feed them liberally for several days on a smooth surface, then damp the floor and smear it with caustic potash; the rats, in running over it while feeding at the bait, get their feet besmeared with it, which causes a burning or corroding of the flesh. At the same time they lick their feet to relieve the pain, and are either so annoyed or poisoned that they leave the premises. (e) Scatter lime chloride in their haunts and holes. (f) Having caught one, tar him all over, or coat him with paste containing tincture of asafœtida, and turn him into the hole again.
Traps.—(g) Scald common gin traps and set them at the holes, covered with sawdust, avoiding touching the gins with the naked hand. (h) Feed the rats for 3 or 4 nights successively, leaving the traps (box traps) fixed open and baited with the following paste, so that they may go in and out and feed at their ease. If the rats are numerous and the premises extensive, take 4 lb. bread crumbs, 4 lb. flour, ½ pint treacle, 1 teaspoonful essence of anise, and ½ teaspoonful essence of musk; mix the whole well together, and bait the traps. Several traps should be so prepared. On the night the rats are to be taken, bait as usual, having the traps set for catching. (i) Set a steel trap in the run and cover it with a butter cloth. A fresh cloth must be used each time. (j) Fill a barrel about half full of water. Make the cover ½ in. smaller all round than the inside of the top of the barrel. Drive a nail or wire on each side of the cover exactly opposite each other, as a pivot, and fit in the barrel, so that a light weight will readily tip the cover. Put the bait on top, in a firm way, and place an empty barrel or box near by. (k) Mix 1 lb. oatmeal or flour, ½ oz. aniseed, 1 oz. cassia, 2 oz. white sugar, all finely powdered; feed with this mixture for 5 nights at least before you tilt up the trap, which must be concealed with straw scented with 4 drops oil of rhodium, 8 drops oil of cinnamon, and 8 drops oil of caraway. The paper on which the food is placed must also be scented with the same. When you cease to catch any at night, feed again, and when you suppose all to be caught in one place, remove the trap to another.
Snakes.—(a) In all probability, the acclimation or encouragement of certain animals which seek out snakes as their favourite food will do more towards effecting extermination than anything else. The mongoose enjoys a reputed pre-eminence in this respect which is quite undeserved—it need hardly be said that the “antipathy” which it is supposed to entertain toward its prey is a chimera born of an argument by analogy to human prejudices. The ichneumon hunts snakes to eat them; so do various foxes, tayras, rats, civets, grisons, weasels, genets, paradoxures, and other members of the Viverridæ and Mustelidæ. Still more addicted to an ophidian diet are pigs; it is said that Mauritius was cleared of venomous species by a number of wild hogs turned loose there. Toads, frogs, fish, lizards, newts, and even slow-worms devour young snakes; indeed, it is only their popularity as an article of food that serves to restrain their increase, for they are produced in broods of from twenty to a hundred or more. But their greatest enemies are birds. Peacocks, in particular, will desert the home where they are fed in a district abounding with snakes; not long ago, six pairs of pea fowl were employed to get rid of the vipers on an island off the west coast of Scotland, which they rendered almost uninhabitable by their abundance. Storks, pelicans, cassowaries, sunbitterns, cranes, falcons, and some vultures are also perpetually on the look-out for snakes, while the scientific title of the secretary bird, Serpentarius reptilivorus, sufficiently indicates its proclivities.
(b) A pitfall of some kind sunk below the level of the ground in an infested district, and furnished with water frogs, and a cage of rats, or some such small deer, might help to rid the neighbourhood.
(c) For every one that may be expected to find its way into a trap, however arranged, a dozen might certainly be taken, living or dead, by those who would make a business of pursuit; and for capturing them alive there is no safer or better appliance than the “twitch.” This consists of a simple loop of string passed through an eye at the end of a long crooked stick, and controlled by the hand. Directly a snake is seen it is hooked out into the open, if need be, away from all shelter, the noose dropped over its head and drawn up tight, and in that way it can be carried, powerless to do harm, or deposited in any receptacle which is ready for it. Collectors, too, would find this little apparatus far more practicable than the net or tongs. Places likely to form a resort for the deposition of eggs—situations which combine warmth, moisture, and protection, as a rule—should be diligently explored; and rocks or other fastnesses known to be their favourite breeding grounds should, if possible, be frequently disturbed by blasting. (A. Stradling, C.M.Z.S.)