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Household and Garden Pests: Take

To Trap Roaches. -Take any deep pasteboard or wooden box and substitute for the cover four pieces of window glass slanting toward the center. Put bread moistened with molasses in the trap and place it so that the cockroaches can easily get to the top. They fall from the glass into the box, and cannot get out. This is a wellknown French device. Another trap used in England consists of any suitable box of wood or pasteboard having a round hole in the lid fitted with a glass ring and baited with bread moistened with molasses or other sweetener.

Or take any deep china bowl or jar and put in it about a quart of stale beer or ale, of which cockroaches are especially fond, or water sweetened with molasses. Lean against this a number of pieces of pasteboard or any inclined surface bending over the top so as to project inside the vessel 2 or 3 inches. The cockroaches climb up the inclined plane, slip into the liquid, and cannot escape.

To Use Cockroach Traps. -Bait the traps freshly each night with any moist sweet substance, and destroy the catch of roaches each morning by fire or boiling water. Have traps always at hand, and they will keep down cockroaches so that it will not be necessary to use dangerous poisons more than perhaps once.

Crickets. The celebrated story by Charles Dickens called "The Cricket on the Hearth," and the well-known superstition in regard to crickets, will perhaps prevent many persons from numbering these little insects among household pests. To exterminate them, if desired, scatter snuff about their haunts, pour boiling water into cracks and crevices from which they emerge, or put ginger cordial in open saucers where they can partake of it.

THE BEDBUG To Keep Down Bedbugs. - Each week on cleaning day air the mattresses and turn them. Use, if possible, metal beds rather than wooden ones. Take down the bedsteads three or four times a year, especially at spring and fall house cleaning, and oil the joints with a mixture of kerosene and turpentine. At spring house cleaning in March or April apply bedbug exterminators thoroughly to kill the eggs that are laid at this time.

Keep bedsteads dusted and cracks cleaned out at least once a week. Go over the bedstead inside and out with a cloth moistened in kerosene. Scatter wild thyme about the mattress and in the vicinity of the bed. The odor drives them away. Do not depend upon Persian insect powder.