WHAT TORTOISE-SHELL IS 
35 
destroying them whenever they occur in the house. If practic- 
able, the removal of the attracting substance or substances 
should always be the first step. It is said that it is possible to 
drive ants away from household supplies by the use of repellents. 
Camphor, either free or wrapped loosely in paper, placed in the 
pantry or other situation infested with ants, is said to have given 
complete satisfaction. The odour of the camphor seems to be 
very distasteful to ants, and it is asserted that they promptly 
leave the premises. 
The best means of effecting their destruction is to attract 
them to small bits of sponge moistened with sweetened water 
and placed where they are most numerous and on their roads. 
These sponges may be collected several times during the day, 
and the ants swarming in them destroyed by immersion in hot 
water. It is said that a mixture of borax and sugar dissolved 
in boiling water will effect the destruction of ants readily and 
in numbers. Borax will, we know, kill cockroaches, and is the 
substance with which milk is drugged in the summer time. 
These are all methods of control, but for extermination, 
success best follows the use of bisulphide of carbon. The 
method consists in pouring an ounce or two of the bisulphide 
into a number of holes made in the nest with a stick, promptly 
closing the holes with the foot. The bisulphide penetrates 
through the underground tunnels and kills the ants in enormous 
numbers, and if applied liberally will exterminate the whole 
colony. 
Though the ants found in houses look small and insignifi- 
cant, yet they have well been termed “ wicked ones.” To this 
we attribute the fact that the thrifty housewife is ever ready to 
listen to methods of extermination, while she takes but a languid 
interest in their communal habits and social economy. We 
have, therefore, endeavoured as far as possible, to meet the 
wishes of the mistress of the store-room and pantry in these 
few words on the subject of house ants. 
R. Hedger Wallace. 
WHAT TORTOISE-SHELL IS. 
is perhaps not generally known — certainly not so 
widely as it ought to be — that the so-called tortoise- 
shell of commerce, the material from which combs 
and hairpins, plain and ornamental, are made, besides 
a multitude of trinkets for pocket, desk, and dressing-table, is 
obtained at the cost of the systematic torture of the animals 
from whose bodies it is taken. 
The shelling process varies in different countries ; but in 
every case it is cruel. We find it stated on the authority of 
