QUALITIES OF IVORY 239 



to die of cold and hunger. The Vaivode, however, thought 

 it not unHkely that some of these ivory hunters with their 

 famihes might have Hved long enough to drift on to the 

 northern part of the American continent. Possibly he be- 

 lieved that they had laid in as a preparation for their hunt- 

 ing a sufficient stock of provisions to support life for a 

 considerable period. 



The finding of fossil ivory in parts of Thuringia and 

 Bohemia was asserted by some of the seventeenth-century 

 writers, but others again considered these bone deposits to 

 be horns of the fabled unicorn. Daniel Sennert, Professor 

 of Medicine at Vratislav, writing in 1618, attempts to estab- 

 lish a distinction between these two kinds of bone or bones. 

 The genuine unicorn horn was hard and dense in structure, 

 so much so that it could scarcely be scratched, much less 

 polished; neither did it adhere to the tongue. This proved 

 that the bone fossils in question were quite different, for 

 they were rather soft, as though calcined, could be easily 

 fractured or polished, and adhered to the tongue just as 

 would any clay, or the famous "terra sigillata." In any 

 case, Sennert is not indisposed to credit the fossil bone with 

 important curative properties. It would afford help in 

 epilepsy, malignant fevers, the plague, cholera infantum, 

 and because it possessed these virtues was freely sold under 

 the name of unicorn horn. Moreover, if bound on a frac- 

 tured bone it would reduce the fracture, and it could also 

 be depended upon to cure ulcers. As these bony or bone- 

 like substances were found only in certain circumscribed 

 districts, Sennert confesses he cannot understand why the 

 unicorn should have existed only in these few places and not 

 elsewhere; on the whole he inclines to believe that the seem- 

 ing bones are really minerals.* Of course there can be 



*Damelis Sennerti, "Epitome naturalis scientise," Francofurti, 1650, Lib. V, cap. 4, 

 pp. 422 sqq. 



