Exmoor Ponies 6 i 



Exmoor Ponies 



[Piatt, facing p. 12S) 



The hills of the west and of the north have their respective 

 breeds of ponies, breeds of which the types have been firmly 

 established for many generations — it would not be too much to 

 say for many centuries. During the last two centuries all over 

 the kingdom there have been attempts made, with greater or less 

 success, to improve these breeds; and it is satisfactory to say that 

 any of these plans which has seemed likely to have an effect on 

 the hardihood of the breeds has been immediately abandoned. 



There is no difficulty in these later days to differentiate between 

 the Exmoor and the Dartmoor breeds; but for all that, there is an 

 opinion that they have a common origin. It is not unlikely that 

 it may be so. Indeed, if we were to go far enough back we might 

 find a common origin for all our British mountain and moorland 

 ponies. But there is no necessity to go so far back as the prehis- 

 toric age, and the Exmoor and Dartmoor breeds have been regarded 

 as separate breeds long enough — probably for centuries. 



There is some kind of tradition that the Exmoor ponies are 

 descendants from ponies brought over by the Phoenicians to carry 

 the tin purchased of the natives. There is, I think, no ground for 

 that opinion, for even if they filled Exmoor and Dartmoor with 

 ponies, what about the ponies of the New Forest, the hills of Wales, 

 and other places, which certainly have an affinity to the Exmoor? 

 The Phoenicians, one would think, could not have stocked the 

 country with ponies. But what is quite possible is that the Phoe- 

 nicians brought over some stallions which improved the breed. 



There are, of course, any number of legends. Wild and wide 

 expanses of country lend themselves to legends, and the legend of 

 . Katerfelto is told in many versions. According to the late Mr. G. 

 S. Lowe, he ran on the moors " a sort of spectre horse ", and no one 

 knew how he got there. He was eventually caught and kept by 

 one of the Froude family at East Anstey. We are also indebted 

 to Mr. Lowe for a very ingenious theory about the moorland 

 ponies. Referring to the Give-and-Take plates of the early years 

 of the eighteenth century, he suggests that these were very popular; 

 that the horses that ran in them never found their way into the 

 General Stud Book, and that in all probability many of them, 

 horses and mares, were turned away on the moors, where they 

 improved the ponies already there. This may have been the case 

 — perhaps in some districts was the case — but I think, if we look 

 carefully through the Racing Calendar and compare it with the 



