Reptiles or serpentine creatures with bodies of nearly the same width throughout were converted into interlaced zoömorphic ornament by twisting, plaiting, looping, or knotting the bodies together. This class of ornament is, in fact, the ordinary interlaced patterns derived from the plait, with heads added at one end and tails at the other. A very ingenious zoömorphic design is made by filling in a long narrow panel with the body of a serpentine creature undulating from side to side. The head of the creature is at the top of the panel, and the body remains about the same width until it reaches the bottom of the panel, where its width is greatly reduced and its direction reversed. On its return journey it makes a series of Stafford knots, which fill in the spaces between the undulations of the body and the sides of the panel, and the end of the tail is finally received into the mouth of the reptile.[460] There are two kinds of zoömorphic designs which are peculiar to the MSS. of the period, namely, initial letters made in the form of a bird or beast, and the incomplete frames round the initial pages of the Gospels terminating in a beast’s head at one end and a fish-like tail at the other. The only thing of a similar kind which occurs on the sculptured monuments is the zoömorphic margin round some of the erect cross-slabs of the east of Scotland.[461] The margin is formed by two beasts, the heads of which appear at the top facing each other and the tails at the bottom. [460] Instances of this occur at Lanherne and Sancreed, Cornwall. [461] At Cossins and Monifieth, Forfarshire; and Meigle, Dunfallandy; and St. Madoes, Perthshire. The arched top of the frame round the miniature of Christ seized by the Jews, in the Book of Kells, is treated in exactly the same way as the pedimented tops of the erect cross-slabs. In the second table of Eusebian Canons, in the Book of Kells, the head and arms of Christ are placed between the two beasts’ heads.