These gradually become larger, and when so the creature may be said to have entered its "nymph" stage; but there is no condition analogous to the pupa-stage of insects with complete metamorphoses.
Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote tragedies upon it; Ovid has described it at length in his Metamorphoses.
But is there any known stage of the human intellect in which these divine adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into animals, trees, stars, and converse with the dead, and all else that puzzles us in the civilized mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life?
Metamorphoses into stones are as common among Red Indians and Australians as in Greek mythology.
His legend includes animal metamorphoses of the most obscene character.
