MISCELLANEOUS. 585 



Remarks.— VossMj our Yankee rats may be too smart for this, but li 

 would make some amusement for the boys to try it, and it may prove satisfac- 

 tory, especially if the hair of the one caught was singed enough to give a 

 smell, not to burn the rat, then allowed to run into the hole, has driven 

 them away many times. 



3. Bats and Mice, Simple Exterminator.— Another German 

 newspaper gives the following simple method for exterminating rats and mice, 

 which, it states, has been successfully tried by one Baron Von Backhofen and 

 others for some time past: "A mixture of 2 parts of well-bruised common 

 squills and 3 parts of finely chopped bacon is made into a stiff mass, with as 

 much meal as may be required, and then baked into small cakes which are put 

 around for the rats to eat." 



Eemarks. — Several correspondents of the same paper afterwards wrote to 

 confirm the experience of the noble baron, as they call him, in the extermina- 

 tion of rats and mice by this simple remedy. It must arise from the action 

 of the squills. 



4. Another Simple Remedy.— A writer in the Scientific Amerijan 

 says: " We clean our premises of rats by making whitewash yellow with cop- 

 peras and covering the stones in the cellar with it. In every crevice or hole 

 in which a rat may tread we put crystals of the copperas and scatter the same 

 in the corners of the floor. The result was a perfect stampede of rats and mice. 

 Since that time not a footfall of either has been heard about the house. Every 

 spring a coat of the yellow wash is given the cellar as a purifier and rat exter- 

 minator, and no typhoid, dysentery or fever attacks the family. Many persona 

 deliberately attract all the rats in the neighborhood by leaving fruits and vege- 

 tables uncovered in the cellar, and sometimes even the soap is left open for their 

 regalement. Cover up everything eatable in the cellar and pantry, and you 

 will soon starve them out These precautions, joined to the services of a good 

 cat, will prove as good an exterminator as the chemist can provide. "We 

 never allow rats to be poisoned in our dwelling, they are so liable to die between 

 the walls and produce much annoyance." 



5. Another very Simple Remedy— Not Poisonous.— Take 

 equal quantities of rye meal, and unslacked, finely powdered lime, mix well, 

 dry, but water in flat dishes may be set near. Put this on pieces of dry boards, 

 in places which they infest. They will eat it readily, and soon become thirsty, 

 and go for the water which slacks the lime, and the gas destroys them quickly. 



6. Chloride of Lime — Put into their holes and scattered around the 

 cellar, or wherever they trouble you, will absorb moisture, and then throw oft 

 chlorine gas, which they do not like, and they generally leave on the double 

 qmck. 



7. Tar— Daubed into and around their holes they very much dislike, and 

 Till not stay unless they can keep their feet clean; they are a very cleanly ani- 

 mal, and cannot bear to get daubed with any sticky stujQE. 



