Judging from the trial at cutting which followed, we should conclude that the lad was correct in his calculation.
“When we put on the composition,” continued the catch-’em-alive maker, “we has the cut slips piled up in a tall mound like, and then we have a big brush, and dips it in the pot of stuff and rubs it in; we folds each catcher up as we does it, like a thin slice of bread and butter, and put it down. As I said before, at merely putting on the composition I could do about two gross an hour.
“My price to the boys is twopence-halfpenny a dozen, or two-and-sixpence a gross, and out of that I don’t get more than ninepence profit, for the paper, the resin, and the firing for melting the size and composition, all takes off the profit.
“This season nearly all my customers have been boys. Last season I had a few men who dealt with me. The principal of those who buys of me is Irish. A boy will sometimes sell his papers for a halfpenny each, but the usual price is three a-penny. Many of the blacking-boys deal with me. If it’s a fine day it don’t suit them at boot-cleaning, and then they’ll run out with my papers; and so they have two trades to their backs—one for fine, and the other for wet weather.
“The first man as was the inventor of these fly-papers kept a barber’s shop in St. Andrew-street, Seven Dials, of the name of Greenwood or Greenfinch, I forget which. I expect he diskivered it by accident, using varnish and stuff, for stale varnish has nearly the same effect as our composition. He made ’em and sold ’em at first at threepence and fourpence a-piece. Then it got down to a penny. He sold the receipt to some other parties, and then it got out through their having to employ men to help ’em. I worked for a party as made ’em, and then I set to work making ’em for myself, and afterwards hawking them. They was a greater novelty then than they are now, and sold pretty well. Then men in the streets, who had nothing to do, used to ask me where I bought ’em, and then I used to give ’em my own address, and they’d come and find me.”
Of Bugs and Fleas.
A numerous family of a large order of insects is but too well known, both in gardens and houses, under the general name of Bugs (Cimicidæ) most, if not all, of the species being distinguished by an exceedingly disagreeable smell, particularly when pressed or bruised.
The sucking instrument of these insects has been so admirably dissected and delineated by M. Savigny, in his “Theory of the Mouth of Six-legged (hexapod) Insects,”[5] that we cannot do better than follow so excellent a guide.
The sucker is contained in a sheath, and this sheath is composed of four pieces, which, according to Savigny’s theory, represent an under-lip much prolonged. The edges bend downwards, and form a canal receiving the four bristles, which he supposes to correspond with the two mandibles and the two lower jaws. It is probable that the two middle of these bristles act as piercers, while the other two, being curved at the extremity (though not at all times naturally so), assist in the process of suction.