LEGEND OF UNICORN

Taranaki Daily News, 27 July 1929, Page 6

LEGEND OF UNICORN

STORY OF ITS ORIGIN. I It was reported recently that the Duke of Gloucester had shot an oryx in Tanganyika territory. The beast is said to have been a large one, with fringed ears. Such an animal may seem at first sight to have nothing to do with a unicorn, but it is at least possible that the legend of the unicorn grew out-of the oryx (says a correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph). The African, even when he is a professional hunter, is not anything of a naturalist. One day a man passed me on the road carrying in the manner of a sceptre of wand of office a long, straight horn. I asked my ■ African companion about the horn, and was assured that it wag a very rare trophy indeed. It came off a great antelope that was only to be found, and then but rarely, in the desert country far to the north. When I asked whether the owner would not be better off with the two horns instead of with one half a pair my companion said that the remarkable beast which provided the horn carried only one. I wrote to friends describing the horn I had seen, and soon was satisfied that it came off an oryx. Some time later I moved to a part of the country where oryx were to be found. The animal is a very shy beast, not easy to approach. From a distance, and especially when broadside on, he certainly appears to have only one horn. Moreover, the first I saw head on had, in fact, only one horn. But when I managed to drop that oryx and looked him over I found that', though the beast had only one horn, he had had two; there is the stump of the second, just where one would expect it. Male antelopes at times bicker one with another, and they do it with their horns. One can hear the rattle of them as their wearers battle together. In a bout of the sort the long, slender horn is apt to snan off, and that, no doubt, was how the single-horned oryx came ti be. Perhaps it was by some such means that the fabulous unicorn found its way into heraldry.