foes. Spenser speaks of “the maiden Unicorne,” and Dallaway, too, refers to “their inviolable attachment to virginity,” and many other writers speak in the same sense, or shall we rather say lack of it! The horn was in great demand as it was made into drinking vessels that were held to possess the invaluable gift of detecting poison. Thus in the “Speculum Mundi” we read of it that “it hath many soveraigne virtues, insomuch that, being put upon a table furnished with many junkets and banqueting dishes, it will quickly descrie whether there be any poyson or venime among them, for if there be, the horne is presently covered with a kinde of sweat or dew.” This belief in the efficacy of the horn of the unicorn as a test for poisons is seen by the frequent appearance of it in mediæval inventories. We gather from these no clue, no alternative name, for instance, to guide us, as to what the material so valued really was. In a book of travels by one Hentzner, a foreigner who visited England in the year 1598, mention is made of a horn of the unicorn that he was shown at Windsor Castle, and which he says was valued at over £1000, as indeed it very well might be, if Decker’s line, “the unicorn whose horn is worth a city,” written in 1609, gives anything like a fair estimate of its worth. In the “Comptes Royaux” of France for 1391 we find the entry: “Une manche d’or d’un essay de lincourne pour attoucher aux viandes de Monseigneur le Dauphin,” and in the year 1536 in the inventory of the treasures of Charles V., we have: “Une touche de licorne, garnie d’or, pour faire essay.” Many other examples of a similar nature might readily be brought forward. It seems strange that a belief in the efficacy of the horn of the unicorn to detect the presence of poisons should have endured for hundreds of years, when practical experiment would in half an hour have convicted the thing, whatever it was, of being a mockery, a delusion, and a snare.