THE UNICORN. 125 



preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, 

 or fresh oil : a circumstance which David joins with that of erect- 

 ing the horn. 



It is difficult to imagine why some writers have been induced to 

 consider the unicorn as being of the deer or antelope kind, since this 

 is of a genus, whose very character is fear and weakness, quite oppo- 

 site, as Mr. Bruce remarks, to the qualities by which the REEM is de- 

 scribed in scripture. Besides it is plain that the reem is not of the class 

 of clean quadrupeds ; and a late modern traveller very whimsically 

 takes him for the leviathan, which certainly was a fish. Balaam, a 

 priest of Midian, and so in the neighborhood of the haunts of the 

 rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia (for they them- 

 selves were shepherds of that country), in a transport, from contem- 

 plating the strength of Israel whom he was brought to curse, says, 

 they had as it were ' the strength of the reem,' Numbers xxiii. 22. 

 Job makes frequent allusions to his great strength, ferocity, and in- 

 docility, ch. xxxix. 9, 10. He asks, * Will the reem be willing to 

 serve thee, or to abide at thy crib ? ' That is, will he willingly come 

 into thy stable, and eat at thy manger? and again: 'Canst thou 

 bind the reem with a band in the furrow, and will he harrow the 

 valleys after thee ?' In other words, canst thou make him to go in 

 the plough or harrow? 



Isaiah (ch. xxxiv. 7), who of all the prophets, seems to have 

 known Egypt and Ethiopia the best, when prophesying about the 

 destruction of Idamea, says, that 'the reem shall come down witii 

 the fat cattle :' a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neigh- 

 borhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation 

 of Egypt, he mentions as one manner of effecting it, the bringing 

 down the fly from Ethiopia, to meet the cattle in the desert and 

 among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did 

 not ordinarily come but on commands (comp. Isaiah vii. 18, 19 ; 

 and Exodus viii. 22), and where the cattle feed every year, to save 

 themselves from that insect. 



The principal reason for translating the word reem, unicorn, and 

 not rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that he must have but one horn. 

 But this is by no means so well founded, as to be admitted an 

 argument for establishing the existence of an animal which never 

 has appeared after the search of so many ages. Scripture, as we 

 have seen, speaks of the horns of the unicorn; so that, even from 

 this circumstance, the reem may be the rhinoceros, as the Asiatic 

 and part of the African rhinoceros may be the unicorn. 



In addition to these particulars, Mr. Bruce informs us, that the 

 rhinoceros does not eat hay or grass, but lives entirely upon trees ; 

 he does not spare the most thorny ones, but rather seems to be fond 

 of them ; and it is not a small branch that can escape his hunger, 

 for he has the strongest jaws of any creature known, and best adapt- 

 ed to grinding or bruising any thing that makes resistance. But, 

 besides, the trees capable of most resistance, there are in the vast 

 forests which he inhabits, trees of a softer consistence, and of a 

 11* 



