If this seem too bold a theory, we must regard the _mithin_ as the larger leopard, an animal of considerable strength and ferocity, which, as well as the hunting leopard, is still found in the country.

[PLATE XXVI., Fig.

2.] The birds at present frequenting Assyria are chiefly the following: the bustard (which is of two kinds--the great and the middle-sized), the egret, the crane, the stork, the pelican, the flamingo, the red partridge, the black partridge or francolin, the parrot, the Seleucian thrush (_Turdus Seleucus_), the vulture, the falcon or hunting hawk, the owl, the wild swan, the bramin goose, the ordinary wild goose, the wild duck, the teal, the tern, the sand-grouse, the turtle dove, the nightingale, the jay, the plover, and the snipe.

There is also a large kite or eagle, called "agab," or "the butcher," by the Arabs, which is greatly dreaded by fowlers, as it will attack and kill the falcon no less than other birds.
We have little information as to which of these birds frequented the country in ancient times.

The Assyrian artists are not happy in their delineation of the feathered tribe; and though several forms of birds are represented upon the sculptures of Sargon and elsewhere, there are but three which any writer has ventured to identify--the vulture, the ostrich, and the partridge.