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Examples

  • The genus Sitaris, which is allied to the blister-fly and to the oil-beetle, is parasitic on a kind of solitary bee which excavates subterranean galleries, each leading to a cell.

    A Book of Natural History Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. Various 1891

  • Birds do not feed on them, owing to the disagreeable odour, resembling that of phosphorus, they emit, and probably because they are to be uneatable; but their insect enemies are not so squeamish, and devour them readily, just as they also do the blister-fly, which one would imagine a morsel fitted to disagree with any stomach.

    The Naturalist in La Plata 1881

  • Among these is the Greek kantharis, or blister-fly, a kind of beetle from which we get cantharides or Spanish fly, quite wrongly believed to be an aphrodisiac -- unless you are a bull or if you like burning & blisters!

    VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol III No 3 1976

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