The Curculio in fact despises it, displaying a very strange contempt when we consider the fervour with which the other legumina are attacked. All, down to the meagre lentil, are eagerly despoiled; and the haricot, so tempting both in size and in flavour, remains unharmed. It baffles the understanding. For what reason does the Bruchus, who passes without hesitation from the excellent to the indifferent and from the indifferent to the excellent, disdain this delicious seed? She leaves the everlasting pea for the green pea, she leaves the green pea for the broad bean and the vetch, accepting the niggardly scrap and the rich cake with equal satisfaction; and the attractions of the haricot leave her uninterested. Why? Apparently because this legumen is unknown to her. The others, whether natives or acclimatized foreigners from the East, have been familiar to her for centuries; she tests their excellence year by year and, relying on the lessons of the past, she bases her forethought for the future upon ancient custom. She suspects the haricot as a newcomer whose merits she has still to learn. The insect tells us emphatically that the haricot is of recent date. It reached us from very far away, surely from the New World. Every edible thing attracts those whose business it is to make use of it. If the haricot had originated in the old continent, it would have had its licensed consumers, after the manner of the pea, the lentil and the others. The smallest leguminous seed, often no bigger than a pin’s head, feeds its Bruchus, a dwarf that nibbles it patiently and hollows it into a dwelling, whereas the plump and exquisite haricot is spared! This strange immunity can have but one explanation: like the potato, like maize, the haricot is a present from the New World. It arrived in Europe unaccompanied by the insect that battens on it regularly in its native land; it found in our fields other seed-eaters, which, because they did not know it, despised it. In the same way, the potato and maize are respected over here, unless their American consumers are imported with them by accident. The insect’s report is confirmed by the negative evidence of the ancient classics: the haricot never appears on the rustic table of their peasants. In Virgil’s second Eclogue, Thestylis is preparing the reapers’ repast: Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus æstu Allia serpyllumque herbas contundit olentes. [59]