.334 THE PONIES OF CONNEMARA. 



.decidedly roach-backed. It is quite possible that the Connemara ponies 

 have inherited this tendency from their Spanish ancestors. 



Compared with a Barb or a Spanish Genet the three ponies described are 

 relatively shorter in the neck and legs, deeper in the ribs, shorter in the 

 ears, and provided with more powerful jaws. If, as commonly alleged, the 

 Irish ponies are suiiply stunted Andalusian horses, they ought, one would 

 think, to resemble fairly accurately the descendants of the Spanish horses, 

 which some centuries ago regained their freedom in the New World. Fig. 

 4 represents a mouse-dun pony, believed to be a lineal descendant of the 

 horses introduced mto Mexico by Cortez early in the sixteenth century. 

 If this figure is compared with Figs, i to 3 it will be evident that though 

 constructed on the same general plan, the Connemara ponies essentially 

 .differ from their New Mexican relatives. It would hence hardly be accurate 

 to describe the Connemara " Hobbie " as a small edition of an Andalusian 

 horse, and yet it is quite unlike an ordinary Norwegian, Iceland, or High- 

 land pony, and it decidedly differs from an improved Norwegian, i.e., a 

 Northern pony, that by being well fed and sheltered during colthood has 

 reached a siz? of from 13 to 14 hands. It might, perhaps, best be described 

 .as a small horse, made by mounting a sHghtly altered Barb on pony's legs. 

 Where, it may be asked, has this pony got its small ears, strong jaws, and 

 short legs? Is it the result of a cross between an Andalusian sire and a 

 native pony? Hybrids bred by crossing mares with a Zebra horse almost 

 invariably in their ears, teeth, muzzle and legs, resemble their sire. In 

 .other respects they may be nearly intermediate in their characters, or take 

 after their respective dams ; the structures which count most in the struggle 

 for existence being most faithfully transmitted, doubtless because they have 

 been most thoroughly burned in. If the Connemara ponies under considera- 

 tion are not, as generally assumed, stunted Spanish horses, the probability is 

 they are the descendants of crosses between Andalusian horses and indi- 

 genous Irish ponies. It is extremely unlikely that the West of Ireland was 

 destitute of ponies until Spanish breeds were introduced during the 

 sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and it is quite as unlikely that when 

 Spanish or other breeds found their way to Ireland, they would completely 

 displace, without intercrossing with, the native breeds. 



We know that during the early " Stone Age " horses were common in 

 Europe — the dismembered remains of thousands that served as food for 

 Palaeolithic man, lie buried in the Rhone valley — and we know that horses 

 were common in Britain before the Roman Invasion, hence it may safely be 

 assumed that if the horse failed to reach Ireland during the " Great Ice 

 Age " it found its way thither soon after. 



It has been long known that in Miocene times two varieties of the three- 

 hoofed " fossil horse " Hipparion (which was sometimes 14 hands high) 

 flourished in south-eastern Europe, and as already indicated, we know that 

 at a later period true horses (of about the same size as Hipparion) were 

 represented by at least two varieties in south and central Europe. It is 

 also known that as the Glacial epoch came to an end, and the ice sheet was 

 gradually rolled back, horses, antelopes, and other mammals pushed their 

 way further and further north, until the area now occupied by the British 

 Islands was eventually reached. 



But in at least the case of the horse the migration northwards was accom- 

 panied by a gradual reduction in size, with the result that in the more 

 northern areas only stunted forms survived — the ancestors of the Shetland, 



