K. DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 459 



IMPROVED STARCH. 



A beautiful finish can, it is said, be given to articles to be 

 starched by taking one fourth of a pound of starch, and 

 working it over, and kneading it with a little water, then 

 placing five or six pints of water in a pan, and adding to this 

 a very small quantity of powdered borax, a small piece of 

 sugar, and a fragment of white wax about the size of a hazel- 

 nut, and heating the whole sufficiently. This water is then 

 to be added to the starch, stirring it continually, and mixing 

 the two together until the whole is as thick as is convenient 

 for application. If the articles are to be made quite stiff, the 

 strength of the starch may be increased two or three fold. 

 9 C, November, 1871,86. 



RAT CATCHING. 



We borrow from the Philadelphia Ledger an account of 

 the methods used by the professional rat-catchers of Paris to 

 destroy the rats which infest the sewers, slaughter-houses, 

 and other localities in that city : "They take a deep tub, with 

 water on the bottom, and a little elevation in the middle like 

 an island, on which is only place for just one rat to sit. The 

 top is covered, and has a large balanced valve, opening down- 

 ward ; on the middle of this valve a piece of fried pork or 

 cheese is fixed, and when the rat walks on it to get the cheese 

 the valve goes down, drops the rat in the water, and moves 

 back in position. A road is made from a rat-hole to the top 

 of the tub by means of a piece of board rubbed with cheese, 

 so as to make the walk attractive for the rats. In the course 

 of a single night some ten or twenty, or even more, rats may 

 go down, and if the island was not there they would be found 

 almost all alive in the morning, quietly swimming around ; 

 but the provision of the little island saves the trouble of kill- 

 ing them, because their egotistic instinct of self-preservation 

 causes them to fight for the exclusive possession of the island, 

 of which, in the morning, the strongest rat is found in solitary 

 possession, all the others being killed or drowned around him." 



Hearth and Home, fox: the 6th of July, contains directions 

 for making traps of the kind referred to in considerable va- 

 riety, which may be consulted to advantage by those who 

 wish to experiment upon the subject. 



