=Larkspur=: Larkspur destroys lice and mites. Sow rather thick, cut when beginning to flower, dry in shade. Strip leaves and buds when full dry, powder, and keep in glass. Save stems and coarse stalks to make tea. Infuse for twelve hours, then boil for two, strain, and reduce by boiling another hour. Use in suds a cup to the quart, or in whitewash a pint to the gallon. Make an ointment by either stewing tender tips in lard or fresh butter in a water bath until the grease is well colored or by putting with it the infusion at full strength and stewing out the water. Stir in a little flowers of sulphur, a teaspoonful to the pint, for use on cattle or horses. Grease back of the ears, under the throat, and along the backbone. Grease poultry under the wings, around the neck, and on top of the head. Blow larkspur powder into the hair of dogs and cats after bathing them. =For Flies and Mosquitoes=: Stop the beginnings. Burn or bury garbage. Spray all possible fly beds well with copperas water daily. Be prodigal of whitewash wherever it will stick. Flush drains well with boiling soda water and use copperas water or carbolic suds to spray earth on which waste water discharges. Keep manure piles covered with fresh earth, also wet daily with copperas water. Set fly traps outdoors wherever the pests congregate. Fill a tumbler two-thirds with suds and lay a cardboard over with a hole in the middle. Smear syrup on the underside for bait. Empty twice a day, burning the drowned flies. Boil together two ounces ground black pepper, four ounces sugar, and a cup of sweet milk, set the syrup shallowly in plates—the flies will do the rest. The mixture kills them, but is harmless to anything else. Oil of lavender sprayed will drive out flies temporarily. So will rose geranium bruised to smell strongly. Screen every opening with wire gauze or cheesecloth, make cheesecloth covers, rounds with wire in the hems, to protect hot food, be diligent with fly paddles, and avoid slopping, also throwing out slops on the ground. Mosquitoes, say the wise men, are a local issue, bred in standing water. Wherefore leave no water standing, not even a rusty canful. Cover rain barrels with screen wire, pour crude kerosene upon ponds and pools. Begin early, before buds swell. Keep it up until frost. Examine cellars, especially barn cellars. Mosquitoes winter in them. Kill all such lingerers with thick smoke—tobacco smoke or from pyrethrum powder or by touching off a little gunpowder on a plate. Concussion makes the mosquitoes drop; sweep up and burn. Concerted action is imperative. If no man liveth or dieth unto himself, how much less so any man’s crop of mosquitoes! Screens and smoke from punk sticks, pyrethrum, and dry pennyroyal are the best weapons against attack. Oil of pennyroyal likewise helps. Smear lightly on forehead, hands, and arms before going to sleep. Wilting leaves of the stately castor bean, also tender branches, hung about will drive out mosquitoes.