My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

RESIDENCE IN SOUTH WALES 97nearly seven hundred feet above us, the leveltop ofwhich was frequented by peewits, and whose steepslopes were covered with trees and bushes. Here welived till I left Neath a year later, and were on thewhole very comfortable, though our first experiencewas a rather trying one. The bedroom we occupiedhad been unused for years, and though it had beencleaned for our use we found that every part of it,bedstead, floor, and walls, in every crack and cranny,harboured the Cimex lectularius, or bedbug, whichattacked us by hundreds, and altogether banishedsleep. This required prompt and thorough measures,and my brother at once took them. I was sent tothe town for some ounces of corrosive sublimate ; theold wooden bedstead was taken to pieces, and, withthe chairs, tables, drawers, etc., carried outside. Thepoison was dissolved in a large pailful of water, andwith this solution by means of a whitewasher's brushthe whole of the floor was thoroughly soaked, so thatthe poison might penetrate every crevice, while thewalls and ceiling were also washed over. The bedsteadand furniture were all treated in the same way,and everything put back in its place by the evening.We did all the work ourselves, with the assistance ofMrs. Osgood and a servant-girl, and so effectual wasthe treatment that for nearly a year that we livedthere we were wholly unmolested by insect enemies.About that time the method of measuring theacreage of fields on maps by means of tracing-paperdivided into squares of one chain each, with a beamcompassto sum up each line of squares, had recentlycome into use by surveyors ; and Mr. Osgood amusedhimself by making a number of these compasses ofvarious kinds of wood nicely finished and wellpolished, rather as examples of his skill than forH