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 Enghsh 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- 



