TO GET CLEAR OF MOSQUITOES.
Take of gum camphor a piece about one-third the size of an egg and evaporate it over a lamp or candle, taking care that it does not ignite. The smoke will soon fill the room and expel the mosquitoes.
HOW TO GET RID OF BEDBUGS.
Bedbugs cannot stand hot alum water; indeed, alum seems to be death to them in any form. Take two pounds of alum, reduce it to a powder—the finer the better—and dissolve it in about four quarts of boiling water. Keep the water hot till the alum is all dissolved; then apply it hot to every joint, crevice and place about the bedstead, floor, skirting or washboard around the room, and every place where the bugs are likely to congregate, by means of a brush. A common syringe is an excellent thing to use in applying it to the bedstead. Apply the water as hot as you can. Apply it freely, and you will hardly be troubled any more that season with bugs. Whitewash the ceiling with plenty of dissolved alum in the wash, and there will be an end to their dropping down from thence on to your bed.
TO OBTAIN FRESH-BLOWN FLOWERS IN WINTER.
Choose some of the most perfect buds of the flowers you would preserve, such as are latest in blowing and ready to open. Cut them off with a pair off scissors, leaving to each, if possible, apiece of stem about three inches long. Cover the end of the stem immediately with sealing wax, and when the buds are a little shrunk and wrinkled wrap up each of them separately in a piece of paper perfectly clean and dry and lock them up in a dry box or drawer, and they will keep without corrupting.
In winter or at any time when you would have the flowers blow, take the buds at night and cut off the end of the stem sealed with wax and put the buds in water wherein a little nitre or salt has been diffused, and the next day you will have the pleasure of seeing the buds opening and expanding themselves and the flowers display their most lively colors and breathe their agreeable odors.
TO INCREASE THE LAYING OF EGGS IN HENS.
Pulverized Cayenne pepper, half an ounce, to be given to one dozen hens, mixed with their food every second day.