Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with such fables as these, disbelieve generally the existence of the unicorn.  Yet there are animals bearing on their heads a bony protuberance more or less like a horn, which may have given rise to the story.  The rhinoceros horn, as it is called, is such a protuberance, though it does not exceed a few inches in height, and is far from agreeing with the descriptions of the horn of the unicorn.  The nearest approach to a horn in the middle of the forehead is exhibited in the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; but this also is short and blunt, and is not the only horn of the animal, but a third horn, standing in front of the two others.  In fine, though it would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or deer-like animal is as near an impossibility as anything can be.

THE SALAMANDER

The following is from the “Life of Benvenuto Cellini,” an Italian artist of the sixteenth century, written by himself:  “When I was about five years of age, my father, happening to be in a little room in which they had been washing, and where there was a good fire of oak burning, looked into the flames and saw a little animal resembling a lizard, which could live in the hottest part of that element.  Instantly perceiving what it was, he called for my sister and me, and after he had shown us the creature, he gave me a box on the ear.  I fell a-crying, while he, soothing me with caresses, spoke these words:  ’My dear child, I do not give you that blow for any fault you have committed, but that you may recollect that the little creature you see in the fire is a salamander; such a one as never was beheld before to my knowledge.’  So saying he embraced me, and gave me some money.”

It seems unreasonable to doubt a story of which Signor Cellini was both an eye and ear witness.  Add to which the authority of numerous sage philosophers, at the head of whom are Aristotle and Pliny, affirms this power of the salamander.  According to them, the animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when he sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well knows how to vanquish.

That the skin of an animal which could resist the action of fire should be considered proof against that element is not to be wondered at.  We accordingly find that a cloth made of the skin of salamanders (for there really is such an animal, a kind of lizard) was incombustible, and very valuable for wrapping up such articles as were too precious to be intrusted to any other envelopes.  These fire-proof cloths were actually produced, said to be made of salamander’s wool, though the knowing ones detected that the substance of which they were composed was asbestos, a mineral, which is in fine filaments capable of being woven into a flexible cloth.