from his reverie by an immense fire over him, which being kept well supplied by the Semangs with fresh fuel, soon completes his destruction, and renders him in a fit state to make a meal of.” (J.  Ind.  Arch. IV. 426.)[5] There is a great difference in aspect between the one-horned species (Rh.  Sondaicus and Rh.  Indicus) and the two-horned.  The Malays express what that difference is admirably, in calling the last Badak-Karbau, “the Buffalo-Rhinoceros,” and the Sondaicus Badak-Gajah, “the Elephant-Rhinoceros.”

The belief in the formidable nature of the tongue of the rhinoceros is very old and wide-spread, though I can find no foundation for it but the rough appearance of the organ. ["His tongue also is somewhat of a rarity, for, if he can get any of his antagonists down, he will lick them so clean, that he leaves neither skin nor flesh to cover his bones.” (A.  Hamilton, ed. 1727, II. 24. M.S.  Note of Yule.) Compare what is said of the tongue of the Yak, I. p. 277.—­H.C.] The Chinese have the belief, and the Jesuit Lecomte attests it from professed observation of the animal in confinement. (Chin.  Repos. VII. 137; Lecomte, II. 406.) [In a Chinese work quoted by Mr. Groeneveldt (T’oung Pao, VII.  No. 2, abst. p. 19) we read that “the rhinoceros has thorns on its tongue and always eats the thorns of plants and trees, but never grasses or leaves.”—­H.C.]

The legend to which Marco alludes, about the Unicorn allowing itself to be ensnared by a maiden (and of which Marsden has made an odd perversion in his translation, whilst indicating the true meaning in his note), is also an old and general one.  It will be found, for example, in Brunetto Latini, in the Image du Monde, in the Mirabilia of Jordanus,[6] and in the verses of Tzetzes.  The latter represents Monoceros as attracted not by the maiden’s charms but by her perfumery.  So he is inveigled and blindfolded by a stout young knave, disguised as a maiden and drenched with scent:—­

  “’Tis then the huntsmen hasten up, abandoning their ambush;
  Clean from his head they chop his horn, prized antidote to poison;
  And let the docked and luckless beast escape into the jungles.” 
      —­V. 399, seqq.

In the cut which we give of this from a mediaeval source the horn of the unicorn is evidently the tusk of a narwhal.  This confusion arose very early, as may be seen from its occurrence in Aelian, who says that the horn of the unicorn or Kartazonon (the Arab Karkaddan or Rhinoceros) was not straight but twisted ([Greek:  eligmous echon tinas], Hist.  An. xvi. 20).  The mistake may also be traced in the illustrations to Cosmas Indicopleustes from his own drawings, and it long endured, as may be seen in Jerome Cardan’s description of a unicorn’s horn which he saw suspended in the church of St. Denis; as well as in a circumstance related by P. della Valle (II. 491; and Cardan, de Varietate, c. xcvii.).  Indeed the supporter of the Royal arms retains the narwhal horn.  To this popular error is no doubt due the reading in Pauthier’s text, which makes the horn white instead of black.