Among other beasts familiar to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia may be mentioned, the _Bison_ (“rimu”) an animal of the mountains and forests, which plays a conspicuous part in the story of Gilgamesh; the old pictograph for the bison consists of the head of an ox in which were inclosed the three diagonal wedges which together signify “mountain,” and thus indicate the place of its origin. Various species of the bovine race have been identified on the cylinder-seals of Babylonia, showing that at the time of the making of the seals, the memory of their existence and probably the actuality of their presence were still felt and known. The _buffalo_ which haunts the swamps of Southern Babylonia often occurs on cylinder-seals belonging to the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and his successors, and is found engraved on fragments of shell belonging to the earliest Sumerian period. Layard tells us that these ugly animals which thrive in the marshes to-day supply the Arabs with large quantities of milk and butter; they are normally managed with ease, but they have a peculiar antipathy to the smell of soap, and in consequence the odour of freshly-washed clothes is apt to irritate them in no small degree. The wild-bull was assiduously hunted by the Sargonid Assyrian kings, among whom we may especially mention Ashur-naṣir-pal in this connection. (For a graphic illustration of that king’s exploits in the chase cf. Pl. XVI). After the Sargonids, the bull-hunt appears no longer as one of the principal royal sports, possibly owing to the relentlessness with which these animals had been hunted down by the kings of that dynasty. In the jungles, at all events in Layard’s day, lions, leopards, lynxes, wild-cats, jackals, hyenas, wolves, deer, porcupines and boars still abounded, while hyenas are sufficiently common to-day.