xiii] GLAMORGANSHIRE: NEATH 187 



level top of which was frequented by peewits, and whose steep 

 slopes were covered with trees and bushes. Here we lived 

 till I left Neath a year later, and were on the whole very 

 comfortable, though our first experience was a rather trying 

 one. The bedroom we occupied had been unused for years, and 

 though it had been cleaned for our use we found that every 

 part of it, bedstead, floor, and walls, in every crack and cranny, 

 harboured the Cimex lectularius, or bedbug, which attacked 

 us by hundreds, and altogether banished sleep. This required 

 prompt and thorough measures, and my brother at once took 

 them. I was sent to the town for some ounces of corrosive 

 sublimate ; the old wooden bedstead was taken to pieces, 

 and, with the chairs, tables, drawers, etc., taken outside. The 

 poison was dissolved in a large pailful of water, and with this 

 solution by means of a whitewasher's brush the whole of the 

 floor was thoroughly soaked, so that the poison might pene- 

 trate every crevice, while the walls and ceiling were also 

 washed over. The bedstead and furniture were all treated in 

 the same way, and everything put back in its place by the 

 evening. We did all the work ourselves, with the assistance 

 of Mrs. Osgood and a servant girl, and so effectual was the 

 treatment that for nearly a year that we lived there we were 

 wholly unmolested by insect enemies. 



Mr. and Mrs. Osgood were both natives of the ancient 

 town of Bideford, Devon, which they continually referred to 

 as the standard of both manners and morality, to the great 

 disadvantage of the Welsh. They were both old, perhaps 

 between sixty and seventy, and thought old fashions were the 

 best. Mr. Osgood was an old-fashioned surveyor, and was also 

 a pretty good mechanic. He prided himself upon his work, 

 upon his plans of the colliery workings, and especially upon 

 his drawings, which were all copies from prints, usually very 

 common ones, but which he looked upon as works of high 

 art. Among these, he was especially proud of a horse, in 

 copying which in pen and ink he had so exaggerated the 

 muscular development that it looked as if the skin had been 

 taken off to exhibit the separate muscles for anatomical teach- 

 ing. It was a powerful-looking horse in the attitude of a 



