The Unicom. 
453 
Assyrian name for which was rimu (Natural History of the 
Ancients , 1879, p. 170)* 
The heraldic unicorn has gained his horn, according 
to some authors, from the spike anciently fixed to the 
head-piece of a war-horse; hut as this does not account 
for the cloven hoofs and slender tufted tail, Mr. Lower 
(<Curiosities of Heraldry, p. 101) reverses the inference, 
and derives the appendage of the charger from the 
popular notion of the unicorn. Guillim, whose work on 
heraldry, published about 1600, is at the same time a 
cyclopaedia of natural or unnatural history, gives the 
following account of this animal:— 
“ The unicorn hath his name of hie one horn on his forehead. 
There is another beast of a huge strength and greatnesse, which hath 
but one horn, but that is growing on his snout, whence he is called 
rinoceros, and both are named monoceros, or one-horned. It hath 
been much questioned among naturalists, which it is that is properly 
called the unicorn: and some have made doubt whether there be any 
such beast as this or no. But the great esteem of his horn in many 
places to be seen may take away that needless scrapie. . . . His 
vertue is no less famous than his strength, in that his horn is sup¬ 
posed to he the most powerful antidote against poison: insomuch as 
the general conceit is, that the wild beasts of the wilderness use not 
to drink of the pools, for fear of venomous serpents there breeding, 
before the unicorn hath stirred it with his horn. ... It seemeth by 
a question moved by Farnesius, that the unicorn is never taken alive; 
and the reason being demanded, it is answered, that the greatness of 
his mind is such, that he chuseth rather to die than to be taken 
alive.” (Display of Heraldry, p. 163, ed. 1724.) 
All sorts of myths grew up around this creature's 
history; it was supposed to live in solitude in the woods, 
and to be of indomitable courage. No man could succeed 
in approaching it, but if a pure maiden came near its 
haunts it would lose its fierceness, lie down at her feet, 
and suffer itself to be captured. It is to be hoped, how¬ 
ever, that few maidens consented so basely to betray the 
confidence reposed in them. Some say that a young 
man, dressed in female attire, served equally well for the 
