In one case, we have a negro very well portrayed; in others we trace the features of Scyths or Tatars.

It is manifest that the artist has not been content to mark the nationality of the different figures by costume alone, but has aimed at reproducing upon the stone the physiognomic peculiarities of each race.
The purely animal representations which the bas-reliefs bring before us are few in number, and have little variety of type.

The most curious and the most artistic is one which is several times repeated at Persepolis, where it forms the usual ornamentation of the triangular spaces on the facades of stairs.

This is a representation of a combat between a lion and a bull, or (perhaps, we should rather say) a representation of a lion seizing and devouring a bull; for the latter animal is evidently powerless to offer any resistance to the fierce beast which has sprung upon him from behind, and has fixed both fangs and claws in his body.
[PLATE LVI., Fig.

4.] In his agony the bull rears up his fore-parts, and turns his head feebly towards his assailant, whose strong limbs and jaws have too firm a hold to be dislodged by such struggles as his unhappy victim is capable of making.