ABSTRACT
IN addition, to ensure that draught-animals remain free from the attacks of gnats and flies in the pastures, their herdsmen are in the habit of burning brushwood of the juniper, which grows profusely in fields and wood-land, and lighting fires down among the roots of the conifers where the animals graze. 1 2 Similarly they set light to fragrant rushes and the dry roots of snakeweed, since the smoke of all these plants makes a marvellous repellent. To drive away gnats and bedbugs from houses, you should fumigate them with the sawdust that collects in large quantities when pine-logs are being cut. Alternatively you can use the smoke from black cumin, dried myrtle, sulphur, bdellium, stinking thorns, and even cow-dung. Again, to rid a home of these abominations, you should sprinkle a decoction of lupin root, black cumin, wormwood, or rue. 2 The rank smell of red leather, which the Germans call Reusch leder, eradicates bedbugs with wonderful efficiency. It is transported from Moscow, through Bulgaria, and into Italy for sale in Rome. 3 They may be eliminated with a mixture of quicklime and sulphur,and you can also kill bugs with a compound of oil, mercury, salt, vinegar, and oak-apple, beaten together, boiled, and pressed two or three times into the cracks of the beds.
