HORNS AND TUSKS 295 



1553, they were said to have carried off a unicorn's horn valued 

 at 80,000 ducats as a gift to their sovereign, Henri II. In all, 

 this writer knew of about a score of these rarities in Europe. 



In the sixteenth century four of these narwhal tusks were 

 preserved in Plessenburg, in Bavaria, as great rarities. One 

 of these had been accepted by a Markgrave of Bavaria as a 

 settlement of a heavy debt due from Charles VI of Germany, 

 and for the largest specimen the Venetians had vainly offered, 

 in 1559, the immense sum of 30,000 sequins. Another was 

 used as a remedial agent, but only for members of the reign- 

 ing family; a small section being cut off to serve as an amulet. 

 A narwhal's tusk in the collection of the Elector of Saxony, 

 at Dresden, was valued at 100,000 thalers.* 



The extraordinary virtues supposed to be possessed by 

 "unicorn's horns" as detectors of poisons rendered them of 

 exceptional value in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 

 when poisoning was so often resorted to as a means of ridding 

 the world of inconvenient rivals. Charles VI of France 

 owned a piece 3 ft. long in 1399, and in 1420 among the 

 treasures of the Dukes of Burgundy was a horn Tj 

 ft. in length, and as we have seen, in 1498, Anne de 

 Bretagne had one 6 ft. long. A unicorn's horn stolen 

 from the house of Pietro de' Medici in Florence, in the be- 

 ginning of the sixteenth century, was valued at from 6,000 to 

 7,000 ducats. As it was so inimical to poison, a drinking- 

 vessel made of this material was of course considered a great 

 treasure. A specimen is noted in the Londesborough Col- 

 lection, and bears inscribed beneath it the name of the 

 Hungarian hero-king Hunyadi Janos, and the date 1444. f 



♦Havorka and Kronfeld, "Vergleichende Volksmedizin," Stuttgart, 1908, Vol. I, p. 323. 



fMiscellanea graphical representations of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance remains in 

 the possession of Lord Londesborough, introd. by Thomas Wright, London, 1857, pp. 26, 

 27 (woodcut of goblet on p. 27). On PI. IV is figured (§ nat. size) an ivory "Main de 

 Justice" of Louis XII of France. On the third finger of the hand proper is a ring set 

 with a small pearl. 



