[348] In writing thus we allude chiefly to the restorations given by Mr. James Fergusson in _The Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored_ (1 vol. 8vo. Murray), a work that was launched upon the world at far too early a date, namely, in 1851. Sir H., then Mr., LAYARD, had not yet published his second narrative (_Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_) nor the second series of _Monuments of Nineveh_, neither had the great work of MM. Place and Thomas on the palace of Sargon (a work to which we owe so much new and authentic information) appeared. In Mr. Fergusson's restorations the column is freely used and the vault excluded, so that in many respects his work seems to us to be purely fanciful, and yet it is implicitly accepted by English writers to this day. Professor RAWLINSON, while criticising Mr. Fergusson in his text (_The Five Great Monarchies_, vol. i. p. 303, note 6), reproduces his restoration of the great court at Khorsabad, in which a colonnade is introduced upon the principle of the hypostyle halls of Persepolis. Professor Rawlinson would, perhaps, have been better advised had he refrained from thus popularizing a vision which, as he himself very justly declares, is quite alien to the genius of Assyrian architecture. [349] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 187-189. [350] LOFTUS thinks that the process was very common, at least in Lower Chaldaea. He found cones imbedded in mortar at several other points in the Warka ruins, but the example we have reproduced is the only one in which well-marked designs could still be clearly traced. TAYLOR saw cones of the same kind at Abou-Sharein. They had no inscriptions, and their bases were black (_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, vol. xv. p. 411). They formed in all probability parts of a decoration similar to that described by Loftus. In Egypt we find cones of terra-cotta crowning the facades of certain Theban tombs (RHIND, _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, p. 136). Decoratively they seem allied to the cones of Warka, but the religious formulae they bear connects them rather with the cones found by M. de Sarzec at Tello, which bear commemorative inscriptions. To these we shall return at a later page. [351] LOFTUS, _Travels and Researches_, pp. 190, 191 [352] LAYARD, _Discoveries_, p. 607. Rich also bears witness to the abundance of these remains in his _Journey to the Ruins of Babylon_. See also OPPERT, _Expedition scientifique_, vol. i. p. 143. [353] A French traveller of the last century, DE BEAUCHAMP (he was consul at Bagdad), heard an Arab workman and contractor describe a room he had found in the Kasr, the walls of which were lined with enamelled bricks. Upon one wall, he said, there was a cow with the sun and moon above it. His story must, at least, have been founded on truth. No motive occurs oftener in the Chaldaean monuments than a bull and the twin stars of the day and night. (See RENNELL, _History of Herodotus_, p. 367.)