310 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



fly had vanished like smoke from the earth after 

 leaving his evil seed in it. 



The beetle feeds on the leaves of solanaceous 

 plants and prefers the potato above all others, so 

 that when he comes in a slow-flying swarm over 

 the potato-field, you see the beetles dropping in 

 thousands like a grey rain upon it, and know that 

 before the sun sets the whole of the leaves will be 

 devoured, the stalks being left till the following day. 

 when he will eat them pretty well down to the 

 ground before passing on to attack the tomatoes. 

 Attempts were sometimes made to drive them off 

 by lighting smoky fires of half-dried weeds round 

 the potato-patch, but never once did we succeed in 

 saving the plants. 



As a small boy I was naturally incapable of 

 entering into the bitter feelings of our elders with 

 regard to the blister-beetle. Its appearance excited 

 me and had the exhilarating effect produced by any 

 and every display of life on a great scale. At the 

 same time I hated it, not because it devoured the 

 potato-plants, but for the reason that I had been 

 feelingly persuaded of its power to produce blisters. 

 I was out running about in the sunshine all day, 

 and the air being full of beetles, they were always 

 dropping upon me and had to be brushed or shaken 

 off my straw hat, my jacket and trousers and boots 

 continually ; but from time to time one would get 

 into my shoe or slip down my neck or creep up my 

 sleeve to get broken on the skin, and in due time a 

 pain would set in just at that spot ; then on pulling 



