From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms were united. The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:-- "The Lion and the Unicorn Were fighting for the crown; The Lion beat the Unicorn All round the town," &c. unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation, which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged with the tawny monarch. Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of catching the Unicorn:-- "Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre, A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes, T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes, And when him rousing in full course he spyes, He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast His precious home, sought of his enemyes, Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast. But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast." Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the supposed mode of entrapping them:-- "For he loves to hear That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers." We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded another form of Unicorn. Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry, which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species of misrepresentation. THE MOLE AT HOME. The Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured dormitories.