PONIES.
Speaking with the practical authority guaranteed by these successes as a breeder of horses of all sizes, the author is con- vinced that for the use of our mounted infantry we must have a special breed of war ponies, or small horses. A cross of Arab blood with our native moor and forest ponies might, he thinks, give us the ideal animal for this kind of work. This view, which is probably correct, assumes that a pony is something different from a horse, and that it has qualities or capabilities of a kind which it can impart to the larger animal by crossing. In other words, a pony is not merely a small horse, which can subsist on rather less food than the larger breeds, but an animal in which a greater degree pro- portionately of strength, constitution, endurance, and perhaps intelligence, is concentrated and inherited. Ignorance, which is defined at Grimsby as not to know a dab from a flounder, is supposed at Horncastle Fair to be embodied in the man who does not know a horse from a pony. Yet the question "What is a pony ? " meets with no very certain answer. Those who go by the card take the mere rule of height, and say that any animal under 14 hands 2 inches is a pony. That is the maximum height allowed in polo matches in England. In India it is 13 hands 3 inches. But many polo ponies are simply small thoroughbreds, with very little difference in points between them and the racing thorough- bred, except that they are older and more developed. The ideal polo pony has been defined as "a miniature thorough- bred steeplechaser," which is not a pony at all except that it can carry a heavier man for its size than a raze-horse. Perhaps the best means of forming an inde- pendent idea of what it is that confers on the pony the distinction of representing a different type, physically as well as mentally, is to compare a number of the portraits (photographs in profile) of the winning ponies of various kinds, from the real ponies used for polo by light-weights, such as the Cairo ponies, which are not miniature Arabs, to the tiny Shetland winner at the last Crystal Palace Show, which only measures 314 inches at the shoulder, the property of Lord Hopetoun's sisters, the Ladies E. and D. Hope. A dis- tinguishing mark of the pony is its head, which is usually shorter from the eye to the nose, and broader between the eyes, than that of the horse. The profile also shows a differ- ence. In the horse the line of forehead and nose is continuous, giving the expression which is meant when human beings are inelegantly said to have a face like a horse. The pony's nose has usually a slight depression below the eyes, where it leaves the forehead. The nose is sometimes almost a "turn- up," with any amount of cheerful expression about it. Arab horses have often the same type of nose. Some thoroughbreds show the same profile—' La Fleche ' has a regular pony nose— and many of the Suffolk Punches, which are the most pony- like of big horses, owing to their short legs, have the same. Ponies, as a class, are more compact in proportion to their size than horses, and have shorter legs. The only point against them is that when not carefully bred they tend to to the wild type, and to become less suitable for riding. Their shoulders become lower and thicker. Pony Ehonlders are, in fact, rather a weak point.
Looking to Nature for a match to the average pony, we find that he has very many of the points of the primitive horse. Burchell's zebra, the commonest species of South Africa, has many of the good points of the pony, and also most of the bad ones. He is short in the back, medium-sized, but
It strong, with a regular pony head and profile. But he has a bad shoulder, and a short stride. All zebras are sure- footed in rough ground, as ponies are, and like ponies they can gallop both up and down steep and mountainous slopes. But the ponies represent a later development than the zebras, and better natural powers. As animals are not really progressive, though by artificial selec- tion their physique or mental capacity can be improved in certain directions, the ponies have often retained much that the horses have lost. The mare of an Arab chief, which lives daily with its master, is fed on little but wholesome food, and exists in nearly natural conditions, retains the qualities of endurance and intelligence, augmented by the purity of its blood, and by slightly increased size. But the artificially enlarged horse of Europe, which spends its life in the stable or in harness, and supports its increased size by consuming greater quantities of artificial food, loses consti- tution, endurance, and brains. It is not fair to our horses to compare them with the sharp-witted little ponies, because they are never given a chance to think for themselves. The tendency for generations has been to make them into machines. That many of them retain the capacity for thinking and learning is proved by their cleverness when any one takes the trouble to teach them. But most, for want of teaching, develop the weaknesses of ignorance, such as panic, excitability, helplessness in danger, and a total inability to understand anything which is new and strange. But in the matter of endurance and constitution the ponies are first and the rest nowhere. Sir Walter Gilbey's collection of pony stories from all lands, Burma,h, Morocco, India, Turkestan, Egypt, Texas, the Soudan, and Asia Minor, with the experiences of Bashi-Bazouks, post-riders, Colonel Burnaby, Colonel Dodge, and half a dozen transport officers in as many British possessions, is delightful reading. Perhaps the most deserving pony of the series was an American - Indian pony whose aegis intance Colonel Dodge made in the great West. He offered 40 dollars for it, but the owner asked 600 dollars. He had ridden this pony during six months, when carrying the mails between Chehuahua and El Paso, nearly three hundred miles apart,. through the territory of hostile Indians, Apache braves who would have tortured and killed him if they had caught him. He made this perilous journey once a week on this pony, hiding all day and riding all night for three successive days. For six months the pony carried him between ninety and a hundred miles three nights in each week. Burnaby used to ride forty miles a day on his Siberian pony. The cavalry in the dash for Metemmeh rode 14-hand Arabs. One day the regiment travelled forty miles in eleven and a half hours, with half a gallon of water per horse and four pounds of grain. But the most satisfactory thing about ponies in general is that from Korea to the Orkneys there is hardly a bad breed. They all seem able to do the maximum of work on the minimum of food. Their intelligence is easily accounted for. Every-where the pony is kept out of doors, and leads a more natural life than the horse. Its hardiness makes it a constant companion of man, and. it is everywhere used for work and not for show. The Shetland pony, the smallest of his race and family, the greatest prize and possession of our childhood, is now be- coming quite a personage on his own account. His birthplace and bringing-up, his career and obsequies, are unique in the history of the world's domestic animals. Born in hyperborean islands of a, diminutive father and still more diminutive mother, he passes from pasture to pasture in boats, till he goes to the South in a ship with hundreds of his companions. Then he descends thousands of feet into the earth, where he works by artificial light all his life, and at his death is brought above ground to be buried. To work in the mines is the destiny of the majority of Shetland ponies. Lord London- derry, kept a famous stud of them, presumably for use in his collieries. This stud has been dispersed, but there are several in the South of England in which, by careful breeding, the ponies are kept small. These are mostly bred for home use, and for ladies' and children's pets. But in the pits the Shetland pony is still indispensable. If it were not for him coal would be even dearer than it is. He never goes on strike, his temper is admirable, he never grows restive even if he bumps his head, which is the only accident which commonly afflicts him, and to guard against which the more thought- ful coalowners provide him with a leather helmet. Now that the pita are lighted with electric light the ponies' sight does not suffer. They have fine stables, with movable boarded floors, so that they never suffer from thrush or cracked heels, and as the temperature is uniform they do not catch cold. Pure Shetlands are the only breed which keeps small enough to work in the seams, even Iceland ponies proving too big and too excitable. There is no room to jump about in a coal gallery, and the conversion of the diminutive "Sheltie" into an equine mole is one of the greatest tributes to its placid disposition, and to the deter- mination of its race never to be anything but ponies. In the quaint phrase of one of their admirers : "There are no ponies small enough to push the Shetlands out of their deserved position." For all that, we hope that a time will come when the Shetlands' place underground may be taken by electric traction, as the ponies took the place of the women and " butty boys" who pulled and pushed the corves in the bad old days, and that the ponies may drink the waters of forget fulness and come up to the air and light again.
Previous page
