A mixture in the proportion of three table-spoonfuls of meal, and one table-spoonful of red lead, wetted to a thin paste with West India molasses, if laid on old plates, and set about their haunts, is very efficacious in expelling cockroaches.
These remedies are all good; and if used perseveringly and always resumed, as soon as the cockroaches begin to appear again, there will be but little trouble with these detestable insects. Nothing has yet been found that can banish them from a house so effectually as to preclude all danger of their ever returning. But much comfort is gained by even a temporary relief from them.
If an insect gets into the ear it may be destroyed by pouring in a little sweet oil. They have been sometimes enticed out, by applying to the ear a piece of ripe peach or apple.
SMALL COCKROACHES.—Many houses are much infested with small brown cockroaches, which are especially troublesome and disgusting from their disposition to get into bureaus, wardrobes, trunks, and even band-boxes. They will soon depart, if bunches of pennyroyal (as fresh as you can get it, and frequently renewed) are laid in all the places where they have appeared, or are likely to come. Pennyroyal is to be generally bought in market at the very trifling cost of one cent a bunch. At any season it can be had at the druggists’, and at the garden stores. Rags dipped in oil of pennyroyal, and laid about their haunts, will frequently expel these cockroaches. But every one that is seen should be immediately killed, and not merely brushed off, to run to another place. There is little difficulty in keeping a house free from cockroaches and all other vermin, if the remedies are applied in time, and with perseverance.
The very bad practice of using old bricks for cellar-walls and back-buildings, is the chief cause of new houses becoming immediately infested with cockroaches, &c. They have in this way been introduced at once into some very elegant mansions in Philadelphia, where old bricks have been used for the cellars; these bricks having originally belonged to old almshouses, long since pulled down. To buy such bricks, however cheap, is a miserable economy.
TO DESTROY CRICKETS.—Mix some powdered arsenic with roasted apple, and put it into the cracks and holes whence the crickets issue. It will effectually destroy them. And cockroaches also.
TO EXPEL FLEAS.—Get some pennyroyal. Having stripped the leaves from the stalks, stuff them into little bags, made of muslin or thin calico, and sewed up all round. Lay these bags among the bedding, and the pennyroyal will send away the fleas. If more convenient, sprinkle the bedding with oil or essence of pennyroyal. When travelling, it is well to take with you some little bags of pennyroyal, in case you should have to sleep in a bed infested with fleas.