UNICORN, a beast of prodigious strength,
having a powerful horn erect upon the
head, between the forehead and nose:
it is generally described as having a
single horn, Num. 23:22; 24:8;
Deut. 33:17; Job 39:9, 10;
Psal. 22:21; 29:6; 92:10. In all
these places the original is [h], Reem,
which the Septuagint renders
μονοκερως
(one-horned): it is believed that the ani-
mal was sometimes found with two
horns; hence "his [Joseph's] horns are
like the horns of unicorns [or reems,]"
Deut. 33:17. Some commentators
have supposed a species of wild bull to
have been intended; but most agree
with the Abyssinian traveller, Bruce.
Mr. Bruce says, "The reem I suppose
to be the rhinoceros. The derivation of
this word, both in the Hebrew and
Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness or
standing straight. The horns of all
other animals are inclined to some de-
gree of parallelism with the nose or os
frontis. The horn of the rhinoceros
alone is erect and perpendicular to this
bone, on which it stands at right angles;
thereby possessing a greater purchase or
power, as a lever, than any horn could
possibly have in any other position.
This situation of the horn is very hap-
pily alluded to in the sacred writings:
'my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn
of an unicorn [reem,]' Psal. 92:10.
Balaam, a
priest of Midian, and so in the neigh-
bourhood of the haunts of the rhino-
ceros, and intimately connected with
Ethiopia, in a transport, from contem-
plating the strength of Israel, whom he
was brought to curse, says, that they
had as it were the strength of the reem,
Num. 23:22. Job makes frequent
allusion to his great strength, ferocity,
and indocility, 39:9, 10. If the
Abyssinian rhinoceros had invariably
two horns, it seems to me improbable
the Septuagint would call him mono-
keros, especially as they must have seen
an animal of this kind exposed at Alex-
andria in their time, when first men-
tioned in history, at an exhibition given
to Ptolemy Philadelphus, at his acces-
sion to the crown, before the death of
his father. The principal reason for
translating the word reem unicorn, and
not rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that
he must have but one horn." Next to
the elephant, the rhinoceros is believed
to be the most powerful of beasts; he is
frequently twelve feet long from the tip
of the nose to the tail, from six to seven
feet high, and the circumference of its
body nearly equal to its length. The
skin of this monster is naked, rough, and
knotty, lying upon the body in folds,
and so thick as to turn the edge of a
scimiter, and to resist a musket-ball.
Defended on every side by such a hide,
which the claws of the tiger and lion
are unable to pierce, and armed with a
weapon which the elephant will not
oppose, this terrible animal fears no
enemy. Travellers indeed have assured
us, that the elephant is sometimes found
dead in the forests, pierced with the
horn of the rhinoceros. Yet he is
neither ferocious nor carnivorous: he is
perfectly indocile and untractable: he is
subsists principally on plants, shrubs,
and branches of trees, and lives to the
age of seventy or eighty years. Dr.
Parsons has given drawings of the horns
of the rhinoceros, from Dr. Mead's and
from Sir Hans Sloane's collections: from
these we ascertain that the straight horn
on a double-horned animal was twenty-
five inches in length; the curved one
being somewhat shorter; and the two
diameters of the bases thirteen inches.
But he mentions a horn of the larger
kind thirty-two inches, and another
thirty-seven inches. Buffon mentions
one whose length was three feet eight
inches, fully justifying the allusions of
the sacred writers.
