Besides heraldic ornament, there was a certain amount of modelled figure subjects of the usual kind--allegorical, mythological, and scriptural; but English plasterers were not very good at modelling the human figure, and it seems to have been generally recognized that a ceiling is not the most favourable position for a close study of detail, and the effect aimed at was one of general richness which did not demand minute investigation--such as, for instance, is necessary to appreciate one of Verrio's painted ceilings--and yet which repaid such scrutiny if subjected to it. Most of the ornament was of a kind which no one would examine unless specially interested--as a draughtsman, for instance, might be; but in some cases the beautiful modelling induces even the casual visitor to put his neck to inconvenience, as he gladly would do to see the Fish ceiling at Audley End, where the panels enclose a number of excellently modelled fishes and other denizens, real and imaginary, of the ocean, and where the pendants are of unusual beauty. Pendants of more or less projection were another means of adding variety and interest to the design (Fig. 167), and they varied in size from a mere excrescence to an elaborate shaft, supported by figures half human, half foliage, which served to hang the lamp from. This shaft would only occur in the centre of the design, but the lesser pendants were introduced at regular intervals and accentuated its salient points. Another kind of ceiling had no considerable ribs at all, but was covered with a flowing pattern in low relief, so arranged as to fall into a more or less symmetrical design. This is by no means a usual form, but there is an example at Burton Agnes, in Yorkshire, and another, which stands halfway between the two ideas, in the gallery at Chastleton, in Oxfordshire. [Illustration: 169.--PLASTER FRIEZE FROM MONTACUTE HOUSE, SOMERSET.]