The amount and variety of these works are tremendous and they have been carefully studied and reported upon by various writers. The following extracts, taken from the most noted among them, will give some idea of the nature and character of these objects. The chief feature of the personal ornaments, according to Ling Roth, is their variety. Another feature is their play upon patterns. For example, the same pattern which is seen in one bracelet is so adapted and reduced in another as to produce a very different effect. Spirals as a basis of design are not uncommon. "And they are often so twisted and interwoven that they produce quite a novel effect." Some of the bracelets are furnished with studs set with agate or coral. Some gold-plated ornaments have been found, among them a "bracelet formed by a double-headed snake grasping between its jaws a decapitated human head and a snake about four inches long." Ling Roth, commenting upon the workmanship of these smaller objects, says that generally speaking it is good, but "it is not as a rule equal to that of the large Benin metal workings; this is no doubt due to the greater difficulty presented by the smaller surfaces on which the artisans have had to work."[42] Speaking of what he calls a curious class of objects, namely, the long armlets and leglets "so fashionable in West Africa," Ling Roth declares them to be "elegantly finished productions and good examples of Benin art.... They are provided with loops for hawk bills, which turn up everywhere in unexpected places through Benin metal work." In describing one such bracelet, which, however, is of modern make, he says that it is "interesting as exhibiting a conventionalized leopard's face on the top, as well as a European's face on the bottom, likewise developing into a form of ornament ... the fertility in design is in all of these forms manifest indeed; it is a feature in the art of Benin natives which any of our jewelers might do well to copy."[43] Passing to a consideration of some of the larger forms of metal casting, we have the following description by Ling Roth of a bronze vase "whose ornamentation consists of four mask-like faces in high relief, two plain and two ribbed, set alternately; above each of the ribbed masks there is a flat spiral on which rests an ornamental triangle on its apex. Between the heads are placed bands of very plain guilloche, each band consisting of alternate three or four rows each, above and below concentric circles of imitation (coral?) bead work, all in low relief, and helping to fill in the ground. The whole arrangement forms a combination of decidedly artistic effect. There is no enchasing or punching of any sort, nor is there much ornamentation, but what ornamentation there is, is designed in such a spirited manner as to produce a result which hardly can be surpassed by Europeans at the present day."[44]