QUALITIES OF IVORY 239
to
die of cold and hunger. The Vaivode, however, thought it not unlikely
that some of these ivory hunters with their families might have lived
long enough to drift on to the northern part of the American continent.
Possibly he believed that they had laid in as a preparation for their
hunting a sufficient stock of provisions to support life for a
considerable period.
The
finding of fossil ivory in parts of Thuringia and Bohemia was asserted
by some of the seventeenth-century writers, but others again considered
these bone deposits to be horns of the fabled unicorn. Daniel Sennert,
Professor of Medicine at Vratislav, writing in 1618, attempts to
establish a distinction between these two kinds of bone or bones. The
genuine unicorn horn was hard and dense in structure, so much so that
it could scarcely be scratched, much less polished; neither did it
adhere to the tongue. This proved that the bone fossils in question
were quite different, for they were rather soft, as though calcined,
could be easily fractured or polished, and adhered to the tongue just
as would any clay, or the famous "terra sigillata." In any case,
Sennert is not indisposed to credit the fossil bone with important
curative properties. It would afford help in epilepsy, malignant
fevers, the plague, cholera infantum, and because it possessed these
virtues was freely sold under the name of unicorn horn. Moreover, if
bound on a fractured bone it would reduce the fracture, and it could
also be depended upon to cure ulcers. As these bony or bonelike
substances were found only in certain circumscribed districts, Sennert
confesses he cannot understand why the unicorn should have existed only
in these few places and not elsewhere; on the whole he inclines to
believe that the seeming bones are really minerals.* Of course there
can be
*Danielis Sennerti, "Epitome naturalis scientiœ," Francofurti, 1650, Lib. V, cap. 4, pp. 422 sqq.
