THE POTATO AT HOME 311 
off my clothes a noble blister would come to light, 
a boss of a pale amber colour and a jelly-like 
appearance. It was ornamental but painful, and 
I would go sore for a day in that part. 
Being a boy naturalist, I tried to discover the 
secret of its breeding habits and transformations, 
but failed utterly. However, they are known, and 
are like those of our familiar English oil-beetle, 
which stagger the mind that contemplates the 
strange case of a big beetle whose eggs produce 
mites—mere animated specks—endowed with an 
extraordinary activity and a subtle devilish know- 
ledge and cunning in building up their own lives 
out of others’ lives. I did, however, succeed in 
discovering one singular fact when on this quest. 
There is a family of big rapacious flies common all 
over the world, the Asilidae, and we have several 
species on the pampas, some arrayed in the colours 
and markings of bees and wasps. One is black and 
has bright red instead of transparent wings, and 
appears to mimic our common red-winged wasp. 
I found out that this fly preyed on the blister-beetle, 
and it amazed me to see that almost every one of 
these flies I could find had one grasped in its feet 
and was diligently sucking its juices through its 
long proboscis. Yet those juices had so potent a 
poison in them that a few drops of them on a man’s 
. skin would raise a big blister! 
Although the potato was very much to me in 
those early years, all my feelings regarding it having 
originated in the chance discovery of the meek- 
