166 ENDURANCE AT SPEED 



together with a certain hardiness ; but the little knife- 

 blade thorough-bred will often carry as big a man, and en- 

 durance at speed is the inheritance only of his race. These 

 Avords, in fact, sum up that peculiar quality which has not 

 yet been reached in any other animal, except, perhaps, in 

 the greyhound. But when we say thorough-bred there 

 is a limited and a broader meaning. The pure Arabian is 

 not, quoad the Stud Book, a thorough-bred ; quoad blood 

 he is so. But to speak of the good blood in the plains pony 

 sounds absurd until you reflect upon where he came from. 



So much for the English pony. When we come to 

 riders, it will be many years before we can boast the skill 

 of our transatlantic cousins, or either of us that of the 

 Japanese, with their light cup -wands for mallets and 

 feather-weight balls. The American polo -fields by no 

 means exhibit the play you see in England. Many a man 

 here indulges in recklessness which would warn him off 

 the ground at Huiiingham, though our cracks are really 

 experts. It takes years at the game to produce the at- 

 mosphere which breeds perfection, and in the twenty it 

 has been played in England it has wellnigh reached this 

 point. But it is well to persevere. We are making marked 

 progress in all our sports, and polo may yet become as 

 much of a national game as base-ball, though let us hope 

 without its commercial aspect. 



The American polo -pony is no other than our little 

 bronco friend. Many come from Texas, Wyoming, Mon- 

 tana. The clever cow-pony is ready trained for the polo- 

 ground. He will catch the idea of the game as quickly 

 as he caught the trick of cow-punching, and he has al- 

 ready learned to stop and turn and twist as only he can 

 do. It must not be forgotten that he has precisely the 

 same blood in his veins which has placed the English thor- 

 ough-bred so far above all other horses. He has increased 



