REMARKABLE AND VALUABLE DISCOVERY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 244, 14 October 1880, Page 4

REMARKABLE AND VALUABLE DISCOVERY.

It has always been easy for house- • wives who are troubled with rats to poison them, but the problem has been to induce them to die upon the field of honor, so to speak — to wit, the kitchen floor. They have usually prepared to retire to their iuacessable retreats in the walls as soon as they hare felt the symptoms of arsenical poisoning, and the low state of sanitary science prevaling in their communities is such that poisoned rats are never properly buried or incinerated by their associates. The problem has been how to kill the rats without bringing unpleasent odours into the house. Mrs Benedict has solved ' the difficulty and is entitled to the honor we give an inventor and benefactor. She was engaged, it appears, in the domestic manufacture of plaster casts of various kinds. Complaint being made of the fragility of these wares, Mrs, Benedict began a course of experiments with the hope of giving greater durability to her casts. One of her devices was to mix wh eaten flour with her pulverised plaster of Paris, so that the gluten of the flour might make the paste less brittle. One evening she had visitors, who rang her door-bell just as she was sifting the mixed plaster and flour for the third time by way of mixing them intimately as the chemists say. She had already set a dish of water at hand, intending to make a cast at once, and when the door-bell rang she hastily removed her apron, and -went to welcome her guests, leaving her materials upon the kitchen table. The guests stayed until late bed time, and when they, bade her adieu Mrs 'Benedict "went to bed without

returning to the kitchen. What happened in the night was this : A rat, sniffing the odour of Hour, made up tho legs of the table to the top, where ho was speedily joined by other foragers — his brethren. The dish of flour was easily reached, and the rats ate freely and readily of it, as is their custom to do. It was rather a dry supper, and water being at hand, each rat turned from the savoury dish of flour and plaster to slake his thirst with water. Everybody who has had to do with plaster of Paris will guess at once what happened. The water drunk first wetted tho plaster in the rats' stomachs, and then, in technical phrase, " set' 5 It ; that is to say, the plaster thus made into a pasto instantly grew hard in each rat's stomach, making a cast of all its convolutions. The event proved that with such a cast in existence ifc is impossible for a rat to retreat even across the kitchen. The next morning thirteen, of them lay dead in a- circle around the water dish. Mrs Benedict, like a wise •yomany kept, her secret and made profit of it. She undertook, for a consideration) to clear the premises of her neighbours of the pests> and succeeded. It was not long before the town was free of this sort of vermin as if the pied piper of Hamelin had travelled that way. Then Mrs benedict advertised for agents to work up the business throughout the country, selling each the secret for a fair price. — New York "Evening Post."