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 E’picauta 
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- 
