Evening star., 1902-03-17
SOME. QUEER REMEDIE
ABSURD USES OF INSECTS By
KENTISH VILLAGERS.
Ants Used for Fertilizers and Fish
Food-Lady birds Cure for
Toothache.

From the Kansas City Journal.
In Kent. England. the village people use
ladybrds to cure toothache. The insect
must be caught and placed alive and unin-
jured in the hollow Of the aching grinder.
Absurd as the remedy may seem. those
who have tried it declare that it beats any
other drug or pain killer. Snails are reg
ularly farmed for food. Snail soup Is bet
ter than any nourlshment in certain cases
Of anaemia- But there Is wide market for
snails for quite another use. They have
long been employed in ut-of-the-way cor
ners Of this country for cleaning windows,
and this use Is now spreading to towns.
Window Cleaning snails.
The creatures are dipped in cold water
and then placed upon the pane. They
crawl around slowly, devouring all foreign
matter and leaving the glass quite bright
and clear. They are, OF course. used only
for upper windows not easily reached from
outside. Water snais also command a
ready sale. Almost every aquarium owner
best of scavengers and keep the place as
tidy as new housemaid. II you dig up
nest of the common brown ants, whose
little mound-like homes are common all
over English woodlands, you will notice. by
putting your face foot or so above the
nil, pungent odOr arising. This Is some
times strong enough to make your eyes
smart and your skin tingle. 1t is the vapor
OF formic acid. the principle of ant poison.
This formic acid has the remarkable prop
erty OF making plants grow more rapidly
than amy known fertilizer. Market gar
deners. therefore. are using large quanti-
ties OF this mold. Of which brown ant hills
are composed. AS it is necessary to have
1t fresh. some are even keeping brown ants
for the purpose.
Another little known use for ants is the
COLL 1nnti Ton, f,ff 1,ri,.
Ing the late summer a good many people
make living by gathering these eggs in
the Surrey and Berkshire pine woods and
selling them to London dealers Fresh
ant eggs are worth half crown a pound.
Perhaps the strangest Of all uses for ants
Is their employment as miners. A species
or ROCKY Mountain ant builds It's nest not
of earth no- wood. but stone, and prefers
those most b liant in colors Miners Of
ten transport whole nest of these insects
to some spot Where garnet abounds and
when they have built their home all the
best crystals within a radius of many yards
are certain to be found in 1t.
Rats Have Thein Uses.
A war Of determination Is in progress
against rats. They are denounced as the
worst carriers of disease and infection and
rewards are everywhere offered for their
dead bodies. Yet even rats have their uses.
When the electric cable has for any reason
to be withdrawn from an underground con-
duit there Is frequently great difficulty in
threading a new one through the narrow
pipe. To get over this difficulty live rat
Is caught, a thread fastened around its
body and the creature Is turned into the
pipe. Once the thread is passed to the
other end it is used to pull a string the
string to pull a heavy cord and to this is
attached the cable.
Even mice have recently found a use
A fire broke out in collery at Dysart and
n or
vas In so bad a state that it was most
dangerous to venture down. The usual
expedient Is to lower a candle and if it
burns to consider the mine safe.
In this case, however. the depth was too
great for such an experiment.; so, after
some consideration, a cage of live rats was
procured and these We're lowered down
the shaft. They were pulled up alive from
the first level, and the men supposed all
was right. Fortunately, the overseer in
sisted on their being dropped to the lower
level. They came up suffocated. Their
lives undoubtedly save a good many hu-
man lives.