ly at the approach of man; they betake
themselves in the daytime to retreats among the marshes or in the
thickets which border the rivers, sallying forth at night, like
the jackal, to scour the country. Driven to bay, they turn upon the
assailant and fight desperately. The Chaldaean kings, like the Pharaohs,
did not shrink from entering into a close conflict with them,
and boasted of having rendered a service to their subjects by the
destruction of many of these beasts.

* The Sumerian name of the lion is ur-malch "the great dog." The best
description of the first-mentioned species is still that of Olivier, who
saw in the house oL the Pasha of Bagdad five of them in captivity; cf.
Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 487. Father Scheil tells me the lions
have disappeared completely since the last twenty years.

[Illustration: 034.jpg THE URUS IN ACT OF CHARGING]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
Nimrud (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi. 11).

[Illustration: 035.jpg a herd of onagers pursued by dogs and wounded by
arrows.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the British
Museum.

The elephant seems to have roamed for some time over the steppes of
the middle Euphrates;* there is no indication of its presence after the
XIIIth century before our era, and from that time forward it was merely
an object of curiosity brought at great expense from distant countries.
This is not the only instance of animals which have disappeared in
the course of centuries; the rulers of Nineveh were so addicted to the
pursuit of the urus that they ended by exterminating it. Several sorts
of panthers and smaller felidae had their lairs in the thickets of
Mesopotamia. The wild ass and onager roamed in small herds between the
Balikh and the Tigris. Attempts were made, it would seem, at a very
early period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; but
this attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertain
results, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animals
were made the subjects of successful experiment.

* The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern
Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of
Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era.

[Illustration: 036.jpg THE CHIEF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OP THE REGIONS OF THE
EUPHRATES.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from
Ko