Next to the lion, the Assyrian artist takes the greatest pleasure in representing the horse. In one scene it is the wild horse, starting and bounding as he is caught by the lasso of the hunters; in another it is the war-horse, dashing at full gallop towards the enemy, and ridden by a warrior who draws his bow or brandishes his lance; or again it is the draught-horse, harnessed to the royal chariot, trampling corpses under his feet, or drawing the heavy waggons in which the booty from the enemy’s country is transported into Assyria. Such was the skill of the artist, that naturalists have been able to decide from the study of the bas-reliefs what breeds of horses were produced in Assyria. The dog, the goat and the sheep, the ibex and the wild boar, the bison and the wild ass, the deer and the gazelle, the camel and the dromedary, are also among the animals which frequently occur in the bas-reliefs designed to perpetuate the memory of particularly successful hunting expeditions, or of the capture of herds belonging to a vanquished people. The artist took pleasure in placing them in the most fanciful attitudes, sometimes with the happiest effect. It was also his delight to introduce in procession the figures of foreign animals, sent to the King of Assyria by tributary nations, such as the elephant, the ape, and the rhinoceros. But the rarity of such animals in Mesopotamia explains the peculiar clumsiness of the Assyrian sculptor in the reproduction of them. Here are apes treated with an almost grotesque _naïveté_; they look like men disguised in the skins of animals, and trying to walk on all fours (fig. 83). [Illustration: Fig. 83.--Envoy bringing apes as tribute (Bas-relief from Nimroud, British Museum).] Among birds we find the eagle, the vulture and the gerfalcon hovering heavily and ungracefully over the battlefields, though the anatomical details of these birds are sometimes executed with skill.[38] The ostrich, a sacred bird, appears on cylinders and among the embroidered designs on official robes. Locusts, that plague of the whole East, figure in the character of offerings to the gods, and, no doubt, represent legions of evil spirits. In the rivers eels, crabs, and fish are placed. In the field, on the mountains, or on the river-banks we find palms and trees of every species, onions, ears of corn, lotus-flowers, vines, marsh-plants. But if the scrupulous imitation of nature sometimes leaves nothing to be desired in these sculptured forms, ignorance of the laws of perspective has forced the artist to employ devices of childish simplicity. Thus, to indicate that trees grow on each side of a stream, he has placed them upright on the further bank, and stem downwards on the nearer.