Pliny,
the Roman naturalist, out of whose account of the unicorn most of the
modern unicorns have been described and figured, records it as "a very
ferocious beast, similar in the rest of its body to a horse, with the head
of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep, bellowing
voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length, standing out in the
middle of its forehead." He adds that "it cannot be taken alive"; and some
such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.
The unicorn seems to have been a sad
puzzle to the hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable a piece
of game. Some described the horn as movable at the will of the animal, a
kind of small sword, in short, with which no hunter who was not
exceedingly cunning in fence could have a chance. Others maintained that
all the animal's strength lay in its horn, and that when hard pressed in
pursuit, it would throw itself from the pinnacle of the highest rocks horn
foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and then quietly march off not a whit
the worse for its fall.
But it seems they found out how to
circumvent the poor unicorn at last. They discovered that it was a great
lover of purity and innocence, so they took the field with a young virgin,
who was placed in the unsuspecting admirer's way. When the unicorn spied
her, he approached with all reverence, crouched beside her, and laying his
head in her lap, fell asleep. The treacherous virgin then gave a signal,
and the hunters made in and captured the simple beast.
[see also:
John Baptista Porta's Natural Magick - Book 15, Chapter 7: "How
Animals are congregated by sweet smells." <<dead link>> ]
Modern zoologists, disgusted as they
well may be with such fables as these, disbelieved generally the existence
of the unicorn. Yet there are animals bearing on their heads a bony
protuberance more or less like a horn, which may have given rise to the
story. The rhinoceros horn, as it is called, is such a protuberance,
though it does not exceed a few inches in height, and is far from agreeing
with the descriptions of the horn of the unicorn. The nearest approach to
a horn in the middle of the forehead is exhibited in the bony protuberance
on the forehead of the giraffe; but this also is short and blunt, and is
not the only horn of the animal, but a third horn, standing in front of
the two others. In fine, though it would be presumptuous to deny the
existence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be
safely stated that the insertion of a long and solid horn in the living
forehead of a horse-like or deer-like animal is as near an impossibility
as anything can be.
