CHAPTER IX. 
THE ORYX. 
From his steed’s shoulder, loin, and breast, 
Silk housings swept the ground, 
With Scotland’s arms device, and crest, 
Embroider’d round and round, 
The double tressure might you see 
First by Achaius borne, 
The thistle, and the fleur-de-lis, 
And gallant unicorn. 
RoMANGE, aiding the skilful hand of Nature with her brightest drapery, has succeeded in investing the group to which 
the Oryx belongs, with a degree of interest that few other quadrupeds can claim. The figure of the renowned Unicorn can be 
traced in all the ancient carvings, coins, and Latin heraldic insignia, to some one of the members of the Orygine family; and 
from our earliest childhood, the form of that fabled animal has been made to occupy so prominent a place in our juvenile 
imaginations, —the fictions of the nursery having first indelibly engraven its outlines upon the tablet of our minds, —that arriy- 
ing at years of discretion, we are still almost tempted to regard it as a creature having actual existence. Of all the whimsies 
of antiquity, whether emanating from the unbridled and fertile fancies of the people of Egypt and Persia, or devised by the 
more chaste and classic taste which distinguished Greece and Rome, the Unicorn — unquestionably the most celebrated—is the 
chimera which has in modern ages engrossed the largest portion of attention from the curious. Like the Sphinxes of Egyptian 
sculpture, or the Centaurs of Grecian fable, the animal, as it is figured at the present day, can exist solely in imagination ; but 
philosophers and zoologists, directing their energies and talents to the subject, and seeking amongst the actual works of the 
creation for the form which could first have suggested so strange a fiction, have selected as its most probable basis, the group 
to which the subject of the annexed portrait belongs. The Rhinoceros is supposed to be the animal so often alluded to in 
Scripture under the name of Reem or Unicorn; yet the combination presented in the Oryx of the antelopine and equine cha- 
racters — the horns and cloven hoof of the one, blended with the erect mane, general contour, and long switch tail of the 
other —corresponds in all essential particulars with the extant delineations and descriptions of the heraldie Unicorn, which is 
universally represented to have been possessed of a straight slender horn, ringed at the base, and to have the hoof divided; to 
haye worn a mane reversed, a black flowing tail, and a turkey-like tuft on the larynx —whilst both the size and ground color 
were said to be those of the ass, with the addition of sundry black markings imparting to the face and forehead, a piebald 
appearance. 
The alterations required to reduce the African Oryx to the standard of this model, are slight and simple; nor can it 
be doubted that they haye been gradually introduced by successive copyists, the idea of the single horn having been derived in 
the first instance from profile representations of that animal given in bas-relief on the sculptured monuments of ancient Egypt 
and Nubia. Excepting in the position and forward inclination of the horn, the cartazonon of the ancient Persians, figured on 
the monuments of Persepolis, and described by ‘lian, tallies in every respect so exactly with the AlgMel, or North African Oryx, 
as the latter would appear en profile, with the straight and almost parallel horns precisely covering each other, that little ques- 
tion can exist as to that animal having furnished the original of the design. Accident may indeed have contributed still far- 
ther to strengthen the opinion, once conceived, of the existence of a monocerine species, for it is well known that among the 
savage tribes of Africa, the art of twirling, carving, and otherwise adorning the horns of their domestic animals, was carried 
to a singular extent —the most fanciful forms being imparted, and the two even sometimes twisted together. It is, however, 
unnecessary to look beyond the ignorance of the limner and the eredulity of the describer, satisfactorily to trace the progress 
of the whole delusion. Unaequainted with the science of perspective, the sculptor could contrive nothing beyond a rude repre- 
sentation — exhibiting a single horn, and often also a single leg only, before and behind; and _ his clumsy designs being, by 
Ctesias, Herodotus, and other writers, handed down as the matter-of-fact delineations of realities, a general belief in the exist- 
ence of one-horned asses became rapidly disseminated. Both the Oryx and the wild ass inhabit the same regions, and possess 
in common the essential attributes of figure, colour, and carriage; nor is it at all unlikely that the mutilation of individuals 
of the first-named species, by the fracture of a horn, may afterwards have tended to strengthen the belief derived in the first 
instance from these imperfect representations, A pair of oryxes thus partially humbled, were seen by Belon at Mecca: and 
the fierce and frequent encounters in which the males engage during the rutting season, cannot fail to multiply the number of 
Specimens continually, Having once caught the idea, the classical fancies of the Greeks soon added the details, and modified 
