Page 27 Advertisements Column 1

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 27

THE UNICQRN WAS, NOT A MYTH lv': v ' v'.-'''--^ : ' | ».';. .—- — THE unicorn was supposed to Be a. one-horned animal of peculiar power^ writes the scientific;; correspondent of the "Manchester^ Guardian." It '^as strong, proud, and beautiful and the protector ftf other animals. :Gn account of such chivalrous qualities it ■wasi^incorporated; hjft; James I in the British coat-of-arms. Myths concerning i unicbpfis appear in the beginning of history. In 'spite |ofconndent';iccbiints of particular examples the possible existence; d£ unicorns has been doubted in recent centuries. There is now evidence that the unicorn myth, as^with so many other myths, is not a pure invention. Dr. W. Franklin Dove, of the University of Maine, has succeeded in producing a magnificent unicorn artificially, arid has described his technique in the "Scientific, Monthly." The horns of calves do not grow out of the bones of the skull but develop from buds in the flesh oyer the. skull. As the. animal grows the horns grow outwards, and at the same time grow:inwards and fuse with die' skull. Dr. Dove transplanted the two horn-buds of a day-old male' Ayrshire calf into a contiguous position on the middle of the top of the skull..As the animal grew the horns from the two contiguous buds fused together, and produced one super-horn over the middle of the skulU, The.animal is.now over two years old. ' .. The horn is white at the base and black at the tip, as is the unicorn's .horn described, by Ctesias, physician to the Court of Darius, in 398 B.C. Ctesias states that the upper part was crimson. This crimson part was supposed to purify poison, so that kings were protected, by, drinking from unicorn horns. Dr. Dove explains that if his calf had been female its hbrn would have had a red part, as this colour is a sex-linked characteristic in Ayrshirecattle. -It seems as if some ancient magicians possessed some operative technique, similar in principle to Dove's, which enabled them to produce onerhofneH cattle or unicorns.