Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 10.djvu/93

LEFT UNGVAR 75 TJNICORN till the animal attains its full develop- ment; the molars have broad crowns with tuberculated or ridged surfaces; clavicals absent; toes with broad, blunt nails, or, in most cases, with hoofs, more or less inclosing the ungual phalanges; scaphoid and lunar bones of carpus distinct. The group is usually divided into two minor groups: U. vera, often called simply ungulata and subungulata. All the species are eminently adopted for a terrestrial life, and, generally speaking, for a vegetable diet. Some are, to a greater or less extent, omnivorous, as Siis; but no genus is distinctly preda- ceous. Also, true ungulates; a group of mammals classed as an order, or as a group of the wider U. Feet never plantigrade, functional toes never more than four, the first digit being sup- pressed; allantois largely developed: placenta non-deciduate; uterus bicornu- ate; mammje usually few and inguinal (as in Equus), or many and abdominal (as in Sus), but never wholly pectoral. There are two divisions: antiodactyla and perissodactyla, first indicated by Cuvier and established by Owen, who proposed the names now in general use. In palaeontology, the Ungulata appear first in the Eocene Tertiary, in which period the Artiodactyla and Peris- sodactyla were already differentiated. UNGVAR, a town of Hungary, on the Qngh river; 325 miles N, E. of Budapest. It is the residence of a Uniat bishop, and contains a cathedral, convent, seminary, normal school, and Catholic gymnasium. The people are engaged in the culture of the vine, and in the manufacture of pot- tery ware. Pop. about 17,500. TJNICORN, an animal having a single horn, frequently mentioned by Greek and Latin authors. Ctesias calls it the wild ass, and Aristotle the Indian ass. Ctesias describes the wild ass as being about the size of a horse, with a white body, red head, and blue eyes, having a horn on the forehead a cubit long, which for the ex- tent of two palms from the forehead is entirely white, black in the middle, and pointed and red at the extremity. Of the horn drinking cups were formed, and those who used them were said not to be subject to spasm, epilepsy, or the effects of poison. Unicorns were said to be very swift and strong, not naturally fierce, but when provoked they fought desperately with horn, heels, and teeth, so that it was impossible to take them alive. Browne enumerates five kinds of unicorns: "The Indian ox, the Indian ass, the rhinoceros, the oryx, and that which was more eminently termed monoceros or unicornis"; and in the same chapter he quotes descriptions of this mythical animal from various authors. Wilkin, in a note to Browne, gives a statement from Riippell that the unicorn exists in Kordofan, where it is known by the name of viillekma. He describes it as of a reddish color, of the size of a small horse, of the slender make of a gazelle, and furnished with a long, straight, slender horn in the male, which is wanting in the female. Some added that it had di- vided hoofs, while others declared it to be single-hoofed. Three Arabs told Riip- pell that they had seen the animal in UNICORN AS USED IN HERALDRY question. All these stories have probably some foundation in fact, to which a large superstruction of fiction has been added. An antelope like an oryx, seen in profile, would appear to a careless observer like an animal with a single horn; and hence the mythical tales of unicorns probably arose. In heraldry, a fabulous animal, having the head, neck, and body of a horse, with a beard like that of a goat, the legs of a buck, the tail of a lion, and a long taper- ing horn, spirally twisted, in the middle of the forehead. Two unicorns were borne as supporters of the Scotch royal arms for about a century before the union of the crowns in 1603; and the sinister supporter of the arms of the United Kingdom is a unicorn argent, armed, crined, and unguled or, gorged with a coronet of crosses patee and fleurs-de-lis, with a chain affixed passing between the forelegs and reflected over the back of the last. Sea unicorn, the narwhal, Monodon monoceros.