6
chamber, gathers all the fleas thereinto, which you may kill or throw out of the window.
6th. Rub a small piece of board over with hogs grease, and all the fleas will gather to it in the middle of the room.
to kill fleas and wall lice.
Take the decoction of thistle and arsmart or coloquintida, bramble, or colewort leaves, and sprinkle about the house, drives them away, or anoint a stick with the grease of a hedge-hog, and lay it in the room, and the fleas will gather and stick to it.
TO KILL RATS AND MICE.
1st. Take ratsbane, powder it, and mix it with fresh butter, or make it into a paste with barley or wheat-meal and honey, and lay on trenchers or boards where they come: they will eat it, and it makes them drink till they burst. It is a strong poison, therefore be very careful in using it, and wash your hands after it. Or unslacked lime and oatmeal mixed, and laid on boards where they come, kills them.
2d. Take oatmeal and powdered glass only, or mix them with fresh butter, and lay where they come. Or filings of iron mixed with oatmeal, or with dough or oatmeal flour, and lay where they do come.
3d. Black hellebore and the seed of wild cucumber mixed with such food as they eat, kills them.—Or mix powdered hellebore with wheat or barley-meal only, make into a stiff paste with honey, and laid where they come, they eat it, it is present death; but great care must be taken, lest any thing they eat should be poisoned.
4th. Take honey or mead, and make a stiff paste with wheat or barley-meal; then mix the filings of iron or steel with it, and throw it where they come, they will eat it, and it kills them.
5th. Chips of cork fried in suet, and laid where they come, kills them.
