THE UNICORN LEGEND

Hokitika Guardian, 24 May 1929, Page 8

THE UNICORN LEGEND

A SUGGESTED ORIGIN. 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, hut it is at least possible that the legend of the unicorn grew out of tho oryx (says a correspondent o*F the London Dajily Telegraph). The African, even when lie is a professional hunter, is not anything of a naturalist. One day a man passed the writer on tho road carrying in the manner of a sceptre or waiul of office a long, straight horn. When lie asked about the horn the questioner was assured that it was. a very rare trophy indeed. It came off a great antelope that was to he found, and then but rarely, only in the desert country far to the north. When further asked whether Hie owner would not he better off with the two horns instead of with only half a pair, the man said that the remarkable beast which provided the horn carried only one. The .writer says: “I wrote to friends describing the horn T had seen, and soon was satisfied that it come of an oryx. Some time later I moved to a part of the country where oryx were t > he found. The animal is a very shy boast, not easy to approach. From a distance, and especially when broadside on, lie certainly appears to have only one horn. Moreover, the first I saw head on had, in fact only one horn. But when 1 managed to drop that oryx and looked him over I 'found that, though the beast had only one horn, he had had two; there was the stump ol tho second, just where one would expect it. “Male antelopes at times bicker one another, and they do it with their horns. One can hear the rattle ol them as their wearers battle together. In a bout of the sort the long, slender horn is apt to snap off, and that, no doubt, was how the single-horned oryx came to lie. Perhaps it was hy some such means that the fabulous unicorn found its way into heraldry.”