THE POTATO AT HOME 309 



The other most interesting memory of the 

 potato refers to its chief enemy, an insect called 

 in the vernacular Bicho moro a blister-beetle or 

 Cantharides, its full scientific name being Epicauta 

 adspersa. Not every year but from time to time 

 this pest would make its appearance in numbers, 

 and invariably just when the potato-plant was at 

 its best, when the bloom was coming. On a warm, 

 still, bright day, when the sun began to grow hot, 

 all at once the whole air would be filled with 

 myriads of the small grey beetles, about twice as 

 big as a house-fly, and the buzzing sound of their 

 innumerable wings, and the smell they emit. It 

 was something like the smell of the fire-fly when 

 they are in swarms a heavy musty and phos- 

 phorous smell in the fire-fly. The blister-beetle 

 had the mustiness but not the phosphorus in its 

 odour; in place of it there was another indescribable 

 and disagreeable element, which perhaps came from 

 that acrid or venomous principle in the beetle's pale 

 blood. Though we heartily detested it, the insect 

 was not without a modest beauty, its entire oblong 

 body being of a pleasing smoke grey, the wing- 

 cases minutely dotted with black. 



The sight and sound and smell of them would 

 call forth a lamentation from all those who possessed 

 a potato-patch and had rejoiced for weeks past in 

 their little green plants with their green embossed 

 leaves, since now there would be no potatoes for 

 the table except very small ones, until the autumn 

 crop, which would come along after the grey blister- 



