[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Chariot horses; from Layard.] Contrary to their usual habits the herd have allowed themselves to be surprised. One of those armies of beaters who are yet employed by eastern sovereigns on such occasions, has driven them upon the hunters. The latter, preceded by their dogs, throw themselves upon the herd, which breaks up in all directions. They pierce those that are within reach with their arrows; those that do not fall at once are pursued and brought down by the hounds. We cannot reproduce the whole scene,[179] but we doubt whether there is any school of animal painters that has produced anything more true to nature than the action of this poor beast stopping in the middle of his flight to launch futile kicks at his pursuers. [Illustration: FIG. 74.--Wild ass. From the hunt of Assurbanipal, in the British Museum. Drawn by Saint-Elme Gautier.] The ibex and the wild goat figure in the same sculptured pictures. One marching in front of the herd turns and anxiously sniffs the wind, while her companion quietly browses by her side; farther off, two kids trot by the side of their mother. The alarm has not yet been given, but upon the next slab the artist shows the headlong flight that follows the discovery of the enemy. Naturally it is the wild and domestic animals of Mesopotamia and the districts about that are most commonly figured in these reliefs, but the sculptor also took advantage of every opportunity and pretext for introducing into his repertory those rare and curious animals which were only seen in Nineveh on rare occasions. Thus the camel that we find in so many pictures is the same as that which now occupies the same region and marches in its slow caravans;[180] but on the obelisk of Shalmaneser we find the double-humped Bactrian camel (Fig. 49).[181] The clumsy tribe of the pachyderms is not only represented by the wild boars that still have their lairs in the marshes of the lower Euphrates;[182] the rhinoceros and the Indian elephant also occur on the obelisk (Vol. I. Fig. 111).[183] The apes shown in our Fig. 64 also seem to belong to an Indian species.[184] The sculptor was not always as happily inspired by these exotic animals as by those of his own country, and in that there is nothing surprising. He only caught a passing glimpse of them as they defiled, perhaps, before the people in some triumphal procession. On the other hand, the fauna of his native land were known to him through long habit, and yet his reproductions of the elephant and the dromedary are very good, much better than those of the semi-human ape. His idea of the rhinoceros is very faulty; the single horn planted on the nose leaves no doubt as to his meaning, but the lion’s mane with which the animal’s back is clothed has never belonged to the rhinoceros. The artist may have worked from a description.