side. Along Hudson Bay shore there is a strip of similar rocks, and a long row of small islands of the same age, with great sheets of trap or diabase forming the tops of the hills. The iron formation is widely spread. There is evidence that Ungava, like the rest of Labrador, has risen several hundred feet since the Ice Age, marine beaches being found up to 700 ft. on the Hudson Bay side; and it is interesting to find seals like those of the adjoining seacoasts in the Seal Lakes 100 m. inland and 800 ft. above the present sea-level. Owing to its northerly position a large part of Ungava is treeless, and belongs to the barren grounds where caribou roam and feed on the so-called caribou moss, a greyish lichen.
UNGULATA, the name of an order of placental mammals in which the terminal joints of the toes are usually encased in solid hoofs or covered with broad hoof-like nails, while the molar (and not infrequently some or all of the premolar) teeth have broad tuberculated crowns adapted for crushing vegetable substances. The teeth (when all are present) are differentiated into the usual four series; and milk-teeth, not completely discarded till the full stature is attained, are invariably developed. All the existing members of the group are eminently adapted for a terrestrial life, and in the main for a vegetable diet. Though a few may in some circumstances kill living creatures smaller than themselves for food, none are habitually predaceous. In none of the existing, and in but few of the extinct types, are collar-bones, or clavicles, developed; and the scaphoid and lunar bones of the carpus are separate. The typical ungulates are the members of the suborders Artiodactyla and Perissodactyla (q.v.), in both of which the bones of the foot articulate with each other by means of groove-and-tongue joints, whence the name of Diplarthra (equivalent to Ungulata Vera), which has been proposed for these two groups collectively, as distinct from the other representatives of the order. The remaining and less typical sub ordinal groups—sometimes ranked as orders by themselves—include among living animals the Proboscidea, or elephants, and the Hyracoidea, or hyraxes, and among extinct groups the Amblypoda, Ancylopoda, Barypoda, Condylarthra, Litopterna and Toxodontia. The characteristics of these groups will be found under their respective headings, with the exception of the Barypoda and Condylarthra, for which see Arsinoitherium and Phenacodus.
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| Right Fore Foot of Indian Elephant. |
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U, ulna; R, radius; c, cuneiform; l, lunar; sc, scaphoid; u, unciform; m, magnum; td, trapezoid; tm, trapezium; I to V, first to fifth digit. |
In the great majority of the Subungulata the bones of the upper and lower rows of the wrist-joint, or carpus, retain the primitive or more typical relation to each other (see fig., and contrast with Perissodactyla, fig. 1); the os magnum of the second row articulating mainly with the lunar of the first, or with the cuneiform, but not with the scaphoid. On the other hand in the Diplarthra, the group to which the vast majority of modern Ungulates belong, the second or lower row has been shifted altogether towards the inner side of the limb, so that the magnum is brought considerably into relation with the scaphoid, and is entirely removed from the cuneiform, as in most existing mammals.
In the typical Ungulata or Diplarthra, the feet are never plantigrade, and the functional toes do not exceed four—the inner digit being suppressed, at all events in all forms which have existed since the Early Eocene period. The os magnum of the carpus articulates freely with the scaphoid. The allantois is largely developed, and the placenta, so far as known, is nondeciduate, the chorionic villi being either evenly diffused or collected in groups or cotyledons (in Pecora). The testes descend into a scrotum. There is never an os penis. The uterus is bicornuate. The teats are usually few, and inguinal, but may be numerous and abdominal (as in Suina), although they are never solely pectoral. The cerebral hemispheres in existing Ungulates are well convoluted. (R. L.*)
UNICORN (Lat. unicornis, for Gr. μονόκερως, having one horn; Fr. licorne; Ital. alicorno), a fabulous beast, usually having the head and body of a horse, the hind legs of an antelope, the tail of a lion (sometimes horse's tail), sometimes the beard of a goat, and as its chief feature a long, sharp, twisted horn, similar to the narwhal's tusk, set in the middle of its forehead. The earliest description is that of Ctesias, who (Indica opera, ed. Baehr, p. 254) states that there were in India white wild asses celebrated for their fleetness of foot, having on the forehead a horn a cubit and a half in length, coloured white, red and black; from the horn were made drinking cups which were a preventive of poisoning. Aristotle mentions (Hist. anim. ii. 1; De part. anim. iii. 2) two one-horned animals, the oryx, a kind of antelope, and “the so-called Indian ass.” In Roman times Pliny (N.H. viii. 30; xi. 106) mentions the oryx, the Indian ass, and an Indian ox as one-horned; Aelian (De nat. anim. iii. 41; iv. 52), quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse, and says (xvi. 20) that the Monoceros was sometimes called Carcazonon, which may be a form of the Arabic Carcadān, meaning rhinoceros (see Rev. W. Haughton, “On the Unicorn of the Ancients,” in Annals and Mag. of Natural History for 1862, p. 363). Strabo (lib. xv.) says that in India there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads. The origin of all these statements is probably to be found partly in the rhinoceros, which was well known to the ancients, and partly in the narwhal, specimens of the long tusk of which were probably brought home by travellers. The theory of a one-horned oryx would probably be drawn from the remembrance of a passing glimpse of an antelope in silhouette, or even of one which had broken one horn off short in fighting, and E. Schrader (Sitzungsberichte d. kgl. preuss. Akad. zu Berlin, 1892, pp. 573–581, and pl. 5) traces the idea of a one-horned ox to the sculptures of Persepolis and other places, which Ctesias would probably have seen, in which the ox, represented in silhouette, has apparently only one horn. As India became better known, and it was realized that the unicorn was not found there, its place of abode was changed to Africa.
The medieval conception of the unicorn as possessing great strength and fierceness may have been partly due to the fact that in certain passages of the Old Testament (e.g. Num. xxiii. 22; Deut. xxxiii. 17; Job xxxix. 9–10) the Hebrew word R’ēm, now translated in the Revised Version “wild ox,” was translated in the Septuagint μονόκερως, in the Vulgate unicornis or rhinoceros, and in the Authorised Version “ unicorn,” though in Deut. xxxiii. 17 it obviously refers to a two-horned animal. The early commentators applied to this beast the classical attributes of the μονόκερως (e.g. Isidore xii. 2, 12 tells how the unicorn has been known to worst the elephant in combat). There is also the passage in Aelian xvi. 20 which says that though as a rule savage and quarrelsome, even with females, the unicorn at mating time becomes very gentle to his mate, which is supposed to have given rise to the medieval idea that the unicorn is subdued to gentleness at the sight of a virgin, and will come and lay his head in her lap, which is the only means by which he can be caught on account of his swiftness and ferocity. This story is illustrated in the tapestry figured in Plate II. Fig. 10 of Embroidery, also on Pisanello's medal of Cecilia Gonzaga (see J. de Foville, Pisanello el les médailleurs italiens, 1909, p. 40), on the reverse of which is a young girl with a unicorn lying by her side, the unicorn here being represented as a beautiful long-haired goat, with the long horn in the middle of his brow. The idea was widely spread in the middle ages, and Lauchert (Geschichte des Physiologus, 1889) gives instances of its allegorical use, as typical not only of Christ and the Virgin, but also of the softening influence of love upon the fiercest of men, and a symbol of purity. As a decoration of drinking cups it symbolized the ancient belief in the efficacy
