PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 106, 8 May 1875, Page 5

PERSONAL AND HOUSEHOLD HINTS.

Ip you are buying carpets for durability, choose small figures. Benzine and common clay will clean marble. If your flat-irons are rough, rub them with fine 'salt, and it will make them smooth. Castor oil is an excellent thing to soften leather. Wood ashes and common salt, made compact with water, will Btop the cracks of a stove, and prevent the smoke from escaping. To clean a browned porcelain kettle, boil peeled potatoes in it. The porcelain will be rendered nearly as white as when new. To ascertain whether a bed be damp or not, after the bed is warmed, put a glass globe in between the sheets, and if the bed be damp, in a few minutes drops of wet will appear on the inside of the glass. A strong solution of carbolic acid and water, poured into holes, kills all the ants it touches, and the survivors immediately take themselves off. Should the top of your lamp become loose, take it offhand wash it with soap ; wash the glass also, then put the plaster around the glas.B ; put the brass top on again, let it stand until hardened, and it is ready for use again. A lamp should never be filled quite full, as the kerosene softens the plaster. If you have a crack in the wall in the corner of the room, or anywhere else, do not send for the plasterer, but get five or ten cents worth of dry plaster of Paris, wet with cold water, then tako your finger and rub it into the crevice till it iB smooth. Bad nail holes in the wall can be done in the same way. It is said that garlic fed to fowls once or twice a week is excellent for colds. Give honey bees plenty of honey, but not too much empty space to cluster in, and keep them dry as well as warm. A sandy or gravelly soil is usually best adapted to the use of plaster, but it is found beneficial upon any soil abounding in vegetable matter. A clay soil has the power of absorbing ammonia from the air, which is one of the offices of plaster, and therefore is not so beneficial upon a clayey as a sandy soil. To Desteoy Fiies. — To one pint of milk add a quarter of a. pound of raw sugar and two ounces of ground pepper : simmer them together for eight or ten minutes, and then when cool place in shallow dishes. The flies attack it greedily, and are soon suffocated. By this method kitchens may be kept clear of flies all summer without the danger attending poison.