This is done by rubbing or brushing into the leather a mixture of drying oils, and any of the oxides or calxes of lead, copper, or iron: or by substituting any of the gummy resins, in the room of the metallic oxides. FURNITURE PASTE. Scrape four ounces of bees’-wax into a basin, and add as much oil of turpentine as will moisten it through. Then powder a quarter of an ounce of resin, and add as much Indian red as will bring it to a deep mahogany colour. When the composition is properly stirred up, it will prove an excellent cement or paste for blemishes in mahogany, and other furniture. _Another Method._ Scrape four ounces of bees’-wax, as before. To a pint of oil of turpentine, in a glazed pipkin, add an ounce of alkanet-root. Cover it close, and put it over a slow fire, attending it carefully that it may not boil over, or catch fire. When the liquid is of a deep red, add as much of it to the wax as will moisten it through, also a quarter of an ounce of powdered resin. Cover the whole close, and let it stand six hours, when it will be fit for use. _Furniture Oil._ Put some linseed-oil into a glazed pipkin, with as much alkanet root as it will cover. Let it boil gently, and it will become of a strong red colour: when cool it will be fit for use. TO REMOVE FLIES FROM ROOMS. Take half a tea-spoonful of black pepper, in powder, one tea-spoonful of brown sugar, and one table-spoonful of cream; mix them well together, and place them in the room, on a plate, where the flies are troublesome, and they will soon disappear. _Another Way._ Dissolve two drams of extract of quassia in half a pint of boiling water, sweeten it, and pour it into plates to be set about the room. This mixture, though fatal to the flies, is not otherwise pernicious. TO EXTINGUISH FIRE IN A CHIMNEY. Put a wet blanket over the whole front of the fire-place, which will stop the current of air, and thus extinguish the flames. TO CLEAN BOOT TOPS WHITE. Take an ounce of oxalic acid, dissolve it in a pint of soft water, and keep it in a bottle well corked; dip a soft sponge into the mixture to clean the tops with, and if there are any spots which refuse to disappear, rub them with a little fine Bath brick dust: sponge the tops afterwards with clean water. Take particular care always to have any mixtures, or powders for boot-tops, labelled with the word poison in large letters, as fatal accidents have arisen from oxalic acid, being so like Epsom salts in appearance, as to be often taken for them in mistake. TO CLEAN BOOT TOPS BROWN.