Ponies. 2 1 1 



a t:a-taster's palate. To develop it in perfection the coachman must be a genius in his way, 

 with fingers as delicate and sympathetic as the fashionable violinist of the hour ; so that whilst 

 the high-couraged horses rush forward at each step, he, as it were, sustains them in the air, 

 After having, then, retained the artist — the coachman — the instruments must be always in 

 tune, stuffed with corn and beans above their work, with just enough exercise to keep down 

 fever. 



A very short season of steady, regular day-by-day morning concerts, afternoon visits, and 

 park drives will bring five-hundred-guinea action down to a hundred, or even forty. This is a 

 fact it is very difficult to make ladies understand. 



Prince (then Count) Esterhazy was once famous in London for the magnificence of his 

 equipages, and particularly for the beauty and action of his harness-horses. His secret lay not 

 only in buying horses of splendid action — that many of greater wealth could do — but in always 

 having his pairs above their work. For that end he had six horses to do the work of three. 

 The pair that excited murmurs of admiration in the Park, or at a Sion House or Chiswick fete, 

 one day, rested the next, with one hour's slow exercise in a brake ; and if any one horse showed 

 the least symptoms of flagging, he was at once sent for a holiday in a loose box at the farm 

 of his Mentor, Mr. Phillips of Willesden. 



If, however, the question turns from the ornamental to the useful, there is no doubt that 

 more pleasure-horses are ruined by too much and irregular rest, too many oats and beans, 

 stables too hot, and very little exercise, than by hard work and hardships. 



As a matter of course, no one who enjoys riding would think of riding a regular brougham- 

 horse or any other horse that drew a heavy vehicle. The moment a horse begins to bend and 

 throw his weight into the collar, he loses that elasticity that makes the pleasure and the safety 

 of a good hack. 



There is, however, no reason why the single horse driven in a stanhope phaeton or other 

 carriage equally light, should not also be used in saddle. Still more suitable are pairs driven 

 in any light carriages — broughams, victorias, wagonettes, mail phaetons — if selected for the 

 double purpose of riding and driving. 



PONIES. 



Next to or before the brougham-horse in general utility comes the pony, which is a sort 

 of equine servant-of-all-work, the souffre douleiir — the whipping-block on which the boys and 

 girls learn to ride, and the ready resource in any emergency, when the boy-page or groom has 

 to hurry off with a letter or telegram, or to fetch some forgotten article for the cook. 



The late Sir Robert Peel did not ask a more difficult question when he invited the House 

 of Commons to tell him "what is a pound" than the man who, in a company of horsey men 

 collected from the four points of the compass, inquires, " What is a pony .' " In Yorkshire, 

 Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire, anything under 15 hands 2 inches is called a pony. The 

 famous steeplechaser, the Lamb, which twice won the Liverpool Steeplechase, and stood 

 15 hands 2 inches high, was called "The Pony" by the professional reporters of his struggles 

 and his triumphs. In Suffolk, which is well known as a great horse-breeding county, the 

 height of a pony is settled at 13 hands 3 inches. 



In Nottinghamshire, as will be seen from a letter of great authority presently quoted, the 

 height is considered to be anything under 14 hands 2 inches; whilst in Devonshire and 

 Somersetshire "the oldest inhabitants" consider any pony more than 12 hands high as the 

 degenerate result of some foreign cross of the ancient Exmoor breed 



