10 IMAGINARY UNICORNS. 
writers, was described by them as an animal 
with long horns, jagged like a saw ; and, in 
this, they had reference to the annulations 
which distinguish the horns of at least a part 
of the Antelopes, and which you observe in 
those of this Antelope before us. But the 
Egyptian name of the Antelope was Oryx, 
rather than Pantholopos; and the Oryx was 
represented, in certain rude Egyptian sculp- 
tures, with a single horn. It followed, that 
the Greeks, who, as I have said, know little 
or nothing of the Gazelle or Antelope but 
by report,—who were superficial in almost 
every thing,—who knew as little of the Rhi- 
noceros as of the Antelope ; and who did but 
gaze, without understanding, upon whatever 
was Egyptian, believed the Orix, Pantho- 
lopes, or Antelope, to be single-horned, and 
to be itself the Unicorn or Rhinoceros, of, 
whose single horn they had listened to the 
report. It is this idle notion, then, (origi- 
nating with the Zoological ignorance of the 
Greeks,) that the Unicorn is the Antelope, 
which has been one foundation of the pic- 
tured Unicorn of heraldry, and which is still 
the source of incessant rumours,—now, that 
