UNICORN, an animal having a single horn, frequently mentioned by Greek and Latin authors. Ctesias calls it the wild ass, and Aristotle the Indian ass. Ctesias describes the wild ass as being about the size of a horse, with a white body, red head, and blue eyes, having a horn on the forehead a cubit long, which for the ex tent of two palms from the forehead is entirely white, black in the middle, and pointed and red at the extremity. Of the horn drinking cups were formed, and those who used them were said not to be subject to spasm, epilepsy, or the effects of poison. Unicorns were said to be very swift and strong, not naturally fierce, but when provoked they fought desperately with horn, heels, and teeth, so that it was impossible to take them alive. Browne enumerates five kinds of unicorns: "The Indian ox, the Indian ass, the rhinoceros, the oryx, and that which was more eminently termed monoceros or unicornis"; and in the same chapter he quotes descriptions of this mythical animal from various authors. Wilkin, in a note to Browne, gives a statement from Riippell that the unicorn exists in Kordofan, where it is known by the name of millekma. He describes it as of a reddish color, of the size of a small horse, of the slender make of a gazelle, and furnished with a long, straight, slender horn in the male, which is wanting in the female. Some added that it had di
vided hoofs, while others declared it to be single-hoofed. Three Arabs told Riip pell that they had seen the animal in question. All these stories have probably some foundation in fact, to which a large superstruction of fiction has been added. An antelope like an oryx, seen in profile, would appear to a careless observer like an animal with a single horn; and hence the mythical tales of unicorns probably arose.
In heraldry, a fabulous animal, having the head, neck, and body of a horse, with a beard like that of a goat, the legs of a buck, the tail of a lion, and a long taper ing horn, spirally twisted, in the middle of the forehead. Two unicorns were borne as supporters of the Scotch royal arms for about a century before the union of the crowns in 1603; and the sinister supporter of the arms of the United Kingdom is a unicorn argent, armed, crined, and unguled or, gorged with a coronet of crosses patee and fleurs-de-lis, with a chain affixed passing between the forelegs and reflected over the back of the last.
Sea unicorn, the narwhal, Monodon monoceros.