368 Rev. W. Haughton on the Unicorn of the Ancients. 



which is every word borrowed from Ctesias) and the Monoceros, 

 which he says the natives of the interior of India call Carca- 

 zonon * : it is the size of a full-grown horse, with a mane and 

 yellow woolly hair, of extreme swiftness, with feet like the ele- 

 phant and the tail of a wild boar ; it has a black horn growing 

 between the eyebrows, which is not smooth, but with natural 

 convolutions, and is very sharp at the point ; it emits loud dis- 

 cordant sounds j it lives peaceably with other animals, but quar- 

 rels with those of its own kind, the males even destroying the 

 females, excepting at the breeding-season, at which time the 

 animals are gregarious, but at other times they live in solitude 

 in barren tracts. The Monoceros is endued with great strength, 

 and is armed with an invincible horn/' 



The whole of the accounts of these Unicorns are so evidently 

 deeply tinged with fable f that it is a matter of surprise how 

 any persons should ever have supposed it possible that such 

 animals might still be existing in unexplored countries. Major 

 Latter, however, some years ago, was very sanguine of being 

 able to find a veritable Unicorn in the interior of Tibet : he was 

 informed by a native, that he had frequently seen these animals, 

 which "were fierce and exceedingly wild, and seldom taken alive, 

 but frequently shot -" and that they are frequently to be met 

 with on the borders of the great desert, about a mile from Lassa. 

 From a drawing which accompanied Major Latter's communi- 

 cation, the presumed Unicorn was something like a horse, but 

 with cloven hoofs, a long curved (!) horn growing out of the 

 forehead, and a boar-shaped tail J. 



Mr. Campbell's § " discovery of the Unicorn in Africa " was 

 nothing more than that of some species of Rhinoceros, which he 

 identifies with the R^em of the Hebrew Scriptures. 



* There can be little doubt that the Rhinoceros unicornis is the animal 

 which forms the groundwork of nearly all that the ancients have written 

 on one-horned animals. The term which ^lian tells us is used by the 

 natives of India to denote an animal with one horn, is almost identical with 

 that employed by the Arabs and Persians to signify a Rhinoceros. " Vul- 

 gatissimum monocerotis nomen, nee solum apud Arabes sed et apud Persas, 

 Tartaros atque Indos receptum est Carcaudan ve\, ut plerumque scribitur, 

 Carcaddan." — Bochart, Hierozoicon, ii. p. 318, ed. Rosenmiiller. Car- 

 cadddn or Carcaddn is the Arabic name for a Rhinoceros : see Freytag, 

 Lex. Arab. s. v., and Catafagos's Arab. Diet. 



t Besides which, it must be remembered that not one of the Greek or 

 Roman writers ever pretended to have seen the animal ; the whole founda- 

 tion rests on the account Ctesias received from the Persians. It is in vain, 

 therefore, to seek for the origin of the story in the supposition that the an- 

 cient Greeks and Romans mistook the horns of some antelope seen in pro- 

 file as if they were only one. The Unicorns, moreover, were supposed to 

 be Indian animals, while travellers are hoping to find them in Africa. 



X Asiatic Journal, xi. p. 154. § lb. xii. p. 36. 



