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chiefly animals that were too bud to keep in training in England, and 

 these have proved quite good enough to " clean out" our native bred 

 ones. 



But although we have been trying and have failed to breed good 

 big horses, we have, on the other hand, without special effort on our 

 part, succeeded in prciducing some very excellent sma^/ horses or ponies 

 and these from the same stock that we have been trying to breed big 

 ones from. This process the breeders of big hoi-ses call degeneration, 

 but [ am inclined to regard it more us a natural evolution, and a 

 ** throwing back" in size to the parent stock of the thorough-bred-horse, 

 the Arab. 



It must always be remembered that every horse in Jamaica, however 

 mean and weedy looking he may be, is thorough-bred or very near it. 

 The horse is not indigenous to 'araaica, and the first horses brought 

 here were the chargers of the Spanish invaders in th^ l(5ti> century. 

 These horses were probably Barbs or Andalalusians, breeds closely 

 allied to the Arabs, which in their turn were the foundation stock of 

 the English thorough-bred. 'I he decendants of these Spanish import- 

 ations were crossed with English thorough-breds, as far back as 1760, 

 and there has been a constant stream of thorough- bred blood flowing 

 into the island from that time up to the present day, from which our 

 present stock of horses is sprung. (It is curious that all importations 

 of blood other than thorough-bred have been failures and have died 

 out, a true instance of the survival of thefittes .) Thus it will be seen 

 that our present Jamaica horses are very nearly thorough-bred, for, 

 the present stock of our horses being the original Spaniards, which 

 were themselves closely allied to the Barbs and Arabs (from which the 

 English thorough-bred is descended) and these Spanish horses being in 

 their turn crossed with English thorough-breds the results must be as 

 near thorough-bred as possible This supplies an explanation for 

 what is sometimes a very puzzling fact in Jamaica We often see an 

 exceptionally smart pony produced by the union of a good thorough- 

 bred horse and a common little "bush" mare, and we wonder at the 

 result. But if we would only recollect that this common little mare 

 is probably as well bred as the horse she was matched with, we would 

 no longer be surprised. 



From the foregoing remarks it will be gathered that it is my opinion 

 that although we cannot produce a good class big horse, we can and 

 do produce from the stock which we now have a very high class pony. 

 The excellence of the ponies which we do now produce, (which be it 

 noted we are not trying to produce, but which are only the misfits of 

 our efforts to breed big horses) is entirely out of proportion to the 

 mediocrity of our big horses. To be logical one would imagine that 

 if we breed bad or mediocre big horses, we should breed moderate 

 ponies. But the very opposite of this is the fact, and I have no hesi- 

 tation m asserting that our best Jamaica bred racing ponies can hold 

 their own in an\ part of the world. 



The excellence of our Jamaica ponies can be best judged by their 

 performances. Dewey, our champion pony, a 14.2 thorough- bre), has 

 run a mile with light weights in 1.50, and 6 furlongs in 1.18, while 

 with weller weights I myself have had the pleasure of riding him in 

 a 6 furlong race in which he carried ISst. 41b3. and won in the fast 



