UNICORN (Lat. unum cornu, one horn), an animal probably fabulous, mentioned by ancient Grecian and Roman authors as a native of India, and described as being of the size of a horse, or larger, the body resembling that of a horse, and with ouc horn of a cubit and a half or two cubits long on the forehead, the horn straight, its base white, the middle black, the tip red. The body of the animal was also said to be white, its head red, its eyes blue. It was said to be so swift that no horse could overtake it. The oldest author who describes it is Ctesias, who resided for many years as physician at the court of Artaxerxes Muemon, and who wrote about 400 B.c. His information, however, was all at second-hand. He calls it the wild ass (ones agrios). Aristotle briefly mentions it under the name of Indian ass, saying: " We have never seen a solid-hoofed animal with two horns, and there are only a few of them that have one horn, as the Indian ass and the oryx." Pliny nearly follows Aristotle, but says that the Indian ass is one-hoofed, and the oryx two-hoofed. He speaks also of the 1110710k81'03, a very fierce animal, with the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a wild boar, and a sin gle horn. All these accounts are evidently untrustworthy, and much tinged with fable. Not more credible are those of more modern authors. Lobo, in his History of Abyssinia, describes the unicorn as resembling a beautiful horse; but there is no good evidence of the existence of any such animal there or in any part of the world. Its existence, how ever, is not to be decided against on any other grounds; for there does not appear to be anything monstrous or absurd in the notion. Although the descriptions of the unicorn
given by the ancients are very unlike the Indian rhinoceros, yet probably that animal was the origin of them all. In like manner, it seems probable that the head of a unicorn, which Barrow saw depicted on the side of a cavern iu south Africa, and the head of a unicorn described and figured by Campbell in his Second Journey in South Africa, are to be referred to some species of rhinoceros. The word unicorn is unhappily used in ver sions of the Old Testament for the Hebrew reins. The Septuagiut led the way iu this, by using the Greek monaccros; and it has been supposed by many that the animal meant. is a rhinoceros. The reem was, however, certainly not a one-horned, but a two-horned ani,.. 11. In Dent. xxxiii. 17, where the English version has " horns of unicorns," the correct translation is "horns of a reem." Other circumstances, as an allusion to the gamboling of the young, are also unfavorable to the idea that a rhinoceros is intended.
The unicorn is perhaps best known as a heraldic charge or supporter. Two unicorns were borne as supporters of the Scottish royal arms for about a century before the union of the crowns; and the sinister supporter of the insignia of the United Kingdom is a unicorn argent, armed, crined, and unguled, or gorged with a coronet composed of crosses patee and fleurs-de-lis, with a chain affixed, passing between the fore-legs, and reflexed over the back, of the last.