Nymph

“ You fall upon the nymph at all hours and in all seasons. Indeed, she boasts that no weather ever keeps her indoors, and prefers a little roughness of the elements to anything too luscious or sentimental. A fresh wind, a sharp frost, a blinding fall of snow, or a pelting shower of rain are all high jinks to the nymph, to whom it is rare fun to come in like a water-dog, dripping from every hair, or shaking the snow in masses from her hat and cloak. ”

“ And the nymphs fled away from them, while beneath their racing steps there sprang up flowery meadows and brooks of water. Each time a goat-foot put out his hand to seize one of them, a sallow would shoot up suddenly to hide the nymph in its hollow trunk as in a cave, and the grey leaves shivered with light murmurings and spurts of mocking laughter.
When all the women were hidden in the sallows, their goat-footed lovers, sitting on the grass of the new-come meadows, breathed in their flutes of reeds and drew from them sounds to destroy the peace of any creature of the earth. ”

“ For the perfect sweetness of her flower-like face;
Eagerly he followed, while she fled before him,
over mead and mountain,
On through field and forest, in a breathless
race.
But the nymph, in flying, trod upon a serpent;
like a dream she vanished;
Pluto's chariot bore her down among the dead;
Lonely Aristaeus, sadly home returning, found his
garden empty,
All the hives deserted, all the music fled. ”

“ By some feeling of impending change the rnature nymph, waiting in its chamber, knows when the time of transformation is at hand. Somehow nature regulates the event so that it will happen in the evening, but, once the hour has come, no time is to be lost. The nymph must break out of its cell, tind a suitable molting site and one in accord with the traditions of its race, and there fix itself by a tirm grip of the tarsal claws. ”

“ Well, here, by a strange inversion that confuses all our views on life, a Cyclopean task is laid upon the nymph of the Anthrax. It is the nymph that has to toil, to strive, to exhaust itself in efforts to burst the wall and open the way out. To the embryo falls the desperate duty, which shows no mercy to the nascent flesh; to the adult insect the joy of resting in the sun. This transposition of functions has as its result a well sinker's equipment in the nymph, an eccentric, complicated equipment which nothing suggested in the larva and which nothing recalls in the perfect insect. ”

“ Just beyond me, there was a broad-green road through the woodland, deeply carpeted with soft grass, but marked here and there with the broad track of a wood-waggon; and on the side of this solitary road, on a rude seat fashioned of two oaken stumps and a rough plank, the nymph was sitting. She wore a light dress of some soft material, a straw hat, a country cloak, and gloves of Paris kid—a civilized nymph, as you perceive! To complete her modern appearance, she carried a closed parasol, and a roll which looked like music. ”

“ Down in the mysterious darkness, in that busy world where so much we do not understand is going on, the little nymph grew very slowly for a year, nourished by the juices of the roots he found near him and which he sucked up through his tube-like mouth. ”

“ The young one, called a nymph, is an ugly little fellow, dingy black with six sprawling legs, two staring eyes, and a big lower lip which covers up its cruel face like a mask. It is a true ogre, lurking under stones and in rubbish at the bottom of the pond seeking whom it may devour. ”

“ His hives stood empty and silent, and no more did "the murmuring of innumerable bees" drowse the ears of the herds who watched their flocks cropping the red clover and the asphodel of the meadows.
Underneath the swift-flowing water of a deep river, the nymph who was the mother of Aristæus sat on her throne. Fishes darted round her white feet, and beside her sat her attendants, spinning the fine strong green cords that twine themselves round the throats of those who perish when their arms can no longer fight against the force of the rushing current. ”

“ After the nymph has its full growth, some sunny morning soon after daylight, it makes its way up out of the water on to a stem and waits quietly for the old dark skin to split. Then out crawls a soft-skinned creature with gauzy wings. But the body is so moist and weak it has to wait awhile for the warm sunshine to harden the skin and strengthen the muscle. When this is done the new dragon-fly, with its glistening body, flies out from the pond in the bright, warm light. ”

“ The period of transformation being come, the pupa goes to the water-side, and fixes on a plant, or sticks fast to a piece of dry wood, in which position it remains for some little time, when the skin of the nymph splitting at the upper part of the thorax, the winged insect issues forth gradually, throws off its slough, expands its wings, flutters, and then flies off with gracefulness and ease. The elegance of its slender shape, the richness of its colours, the delicacy and resplendent texture of its wings, render it a beautiful object. ”

“ Nor does the nymph which succeeds this tertiary larva present any peculiarity: it is the perfect insect in swaddling-bands, yellowish white, with its various external members, clear as crystal, displayed under the abdomen. A few weeks elapse, during which the nymph partly dons the livery of the adult state; and, in about a month, the insect moults for a last time, in the usual manner, in order to attain its final form. The wing-cases are now of a uniform yellowish white, as are the wings, the abdomen and the greater part of the legs; very nearly all the rest of the body is of a glossy black. ”

“ It must appear that the nymph, or young of an insect with incomplete metamorphosis, is merely an aberrant development of the normal form of the young as it occurs in an insect without metamorphosis. This is evident from the fact that the nymph has external wings, fully developed compound eyes, and in general the same details of structure in the legs and other parts of the body as has the adult. ”

“ Nymphs are only artistic and alluring singly—one nymph on a rock before a gallant prince.
In numbers they are absolutely wild and have no manners at all. Lucky old ogre, to possess twelve such princesses, I thought; but as I looked at the gleam of their limbs as they mocked, and heard their hard laughter, I found him to be but a pitiable old greybeard, for he looked at beauty that he could scarce comprehend and never possess. The beauty of life has power greater than the beauty of the sea. ”

“ To dig itself a cell in this unctuous mass ought, according to our logic, to suit the grub, desirous of a yielding mattress for the nymph to lie on. We are mistaken in our suppositions. The grub retreats to the lower end of its column, retires into the sand where the hatching took place and there makes itself a hard, rough cavity. This aberration, which takes no account of the future nymph, and its delicate skin, would be likely to surprise us if the homely dwelling were not subjected to improvement. ”

“ Looking around him, he observed to his astonishment an oak suddenly cleave itself open, and out of it there came a nymph. A hundred other trees did the same, giving birth to as many nymphs. They were all habited as we see them in theatres; only, instead of bows and arrows, each held a lute or guitar. Coming towards the hero with joyful eyes, they formed a circle about him, and danced; and in their dancing they sang, and bade him welcome to the haunt of their mistress, their loving mistress, of whom he was the only hope and joy. ”

“ There had been one picture in particular, the Martyrdom of Cupid, by Luca Signorelli, in which Cupid himself, and the nymphs who persecute him, are of a beauty so overpowering that J. Spratt and the trusty friends would always feel faint, and weak in their backs and legs, through sheer excess of sensuous pleasure when they gazed at it; and varied as those nymphs were in form, hue, and feature, she could not claim the remotest resemblance to any single nymph amongst them, not even when she tried in a little round mirror. ”

“ Nature being suffered to model her daughters according to her will, their figures during a brief period are graceful; but feminine symmetry is soon destroyed by the constant pressure of heavy loads against the chest, and under the fiery heat of her native sands, the nymph is presently transformed into the decrepit hag, with bent back and waddling gait. A short apron of bullock’s hide, with frilled edges, is tied above the hips with a broad band, the sport of every wanton whirlwind ”

“ She prefers this kind of thing to the suggestive beauty of the moonlight or the fervid heats of summer; and thinks a long walk in the crisp sharp frost, with the leaves crackling under her feet, worth all the nightingales in the wood. And yet she loves the spring and summer too, for the sake of the flowers and the birds and the beasts and the insects they bring forth; for the nymph is almost always a naturalist of the perceptive and self-taught kind, and has a marvellous 139 faculty for finding out nests and rare habitats, and for tracking unusual trails to the hidden home. ”

“ In order to breathe, the fully-grown nymph either rises up on the upper side and elevates the end of the body to the surface in order to take the air into the rectum, or it rests with the back of the thorax at the surface in order to breathe through the large stigmata. The young nymphs take in air only through the rectum. The young nymphs of Libellula and its allies, on the other hand, possess large thoracic stigmata, but they prefer to breathe through the rectum. The fully-grown nymphs of Agrion breathe through the thoracic stigmata. (Dewitz, in Kolbe.) ”

“ Telling me only where my nymph is fled,—
Where she doth breathe!' 'Bright planet, thou hast said,'
Return'd the snake, 'but seal with oaths, fair God!'
'I swear,' said Hermes, 'by my serpent rod,
And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown!'90
Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown.
Then thus again the brilliance feminine:
'Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine,
Free as the air, invisibly, she strays
About these thornless wilds; her pleasant days
She tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet
Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet ”

“ That which adds still more to the difficulty of recognizing them is, that while young they are often enveloped in swaddling clothes which nevertheless permit them to wander freely; then in a simple robe, in keeping with the home which shelters them; and at last in a wedding dress, which hides the eggs and the apparatus which produces them. The nymph in her virgin condition has none of the attributes of future maternity. ”

“ Eaton in his elaborate work on the Ephemeridæ employs the term nymph to designate all the aquatic or early stages in the development of the young after hatching, and he urges that the old-fashioned usage of larva and pupa seem scarcely worth retention. “Nymphs are young which live an active life, quitting the egg at a tolerably advanced stage of morphological development and having the mouth-parts formed after the same main type of construction as those of the adult insect.” ”

“ A nymph is about to step down from her pedestal, and will probably take a bath as soon as we are gone, though certainly she need not be shy about it, as drapery is not much the fashion in these sylvan gardens. ”

“ But only a few nymphs are ever to be round on twigs where piles of embryonic skins show that hundreds have recently hatched; so it is evident that the great majority either fall off or are blown away very shortly after emerg- ing. Many undoubtedly fall before the shedding of the egg membrane, for the inclosed creature has no possible way of holding on, and even the free nymph has but feeble clinging powers. ”

“ At first the wings have only the length of the wing-pads of the nymph, and their apical portion is an unformed mass. The colour of the perfect Insect is not present when the emergence takes place. The wing grows quickly until the full length is attained. In the genus Agrion {420}the expansion of the wings is accompanied by frequent elevations and depressions of the body, and occupies an hour or so; the elongation of the abdomen is not so soon completed, and its brilliant colours do not appear for several hours.
Fig. 267.—Young nymph of Aeschna sp. ”

“ These nymphs and spirits were innumerable. [169] Every woman was supposed to have a guardian nymph. The nymphs were supposed by some to be immortal and endowed with perpetual youth; others described them as mortal though they never grew old. There was also a group of male spirits who were regarded by some as mortal, by others as immortal. They wandered with the nymphs through forests, gardens, and other open places. They were imagined as very tall, with features like those of men ”

“ Fig. 10 is a very effective nymph, the body made entirely of natural raffia (soaked in water before using) , with black hair used for the tail and feelers The body coated with lacquer as before mentioned and pressed flat when dry; paint the back with dark brown or black lacquer.
Fig. 11 is made by close wound palmer hackle cut off on dotted lines. Fig. 12 is a fur body, made by spinning rabbit's fur or other fur on waxed tying silk and ribbing with gold; the tougher this nymph looks the more effective it seems to be. Fig. ”

“ It will interest you, being quite piscatorial and idyllic. Conceive to yourself, first, the primaeval woodland; then two figures, a nymph in a frock and a satyr in a clerical coat. The nymph, your friend Miss Dove; the satyr, your other friend, Mr. Santley. She was crying; he consoling. I heard their conversation; I saw them quarrel, make it up, embrace, kiss, and disappear. I think you will agree with me that so pretty a pastoral should have, in a moral country, but one sequel—marriage. ”