This section of the book is from the "Household Companion: The Model CookBook" book
Put some strong snuff in the cracks and holes in which they hide. The parings of cucumbers will, if strewn about near their holes, drive them away. Roaches devour greedily flour paste, and die while eating it, if into half a pint of it, while hot, a dime's worth of phosphorus is stirred with a stick.
Take strong green tea, sweetened well, and set in saucers about the places where they are most numerous. To destroy them in this way is preferable to the use of fly-papers, which catch the insects alive, and cause them to die a slow death.
A tasteless, odorless, and infallible rat poison is made as follows: Mix carbonate of barytes, two ounces, with grease, one pound. It produces great thirst, consequently water must be set by it, for death takes place immediately after drinking, not giving them time to go back to their holes. Be sure no other animal can get at it, except rats and mice, for it is a most deadly poison.
Persian Insect Powder is an unfailing bed-bug poison. It is not poisonous, but none the less is sure death to all insects. It is blown with an insect gun into all cracks, crevices, and places where bugs can find an entrance. This has been tried and found to be efficacious in hundreds of instances. To wash bedsteads with coal oil will also clear them of bugs.
Wash your shelves down clean, and while damp rub fine salt on them quite thick; let it remain on them for some time, and red ants will disappear.
Another remedy for ants may be made of half a pound flour of sulphur and four ounces potash. Put them over the fire in an earthen pan till they dissolve and unite. When cold, beat them to a powder, put a little of this into water, and sprinkle the infested places. The ants will leave.
Dissolve two ounces of alum in three or four quarts of water, letting it remain over night, until the alum is thoroughly dissolved. Then apply it, boiling hot, with a brush, to every joint or crevice that is infested by ants, roaches, bed-bugs, etc. Brush all the cracks in the floor and mop-boards. Keep it boiling hot while using.
A bottle of the oil of pennyroyal, left uncorked in a room at night, will dispose of mosquitoes. Not one will be found in the morning. Rats may be dealt with by mixing potash with meal and throwing it into their holes. If a rat or a mouse gets into the pantry, stuff into its hole a rag saturated with cayenne pepper. That pathway to the pantry will be deserted.
 
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