ExMOOR AXD Cheviots. 217 



being par excellence the pony fair of the West of England. Later on a Uttle more breaking 

 was bestowed on the ponies, and for several years the sale lots were sent by rail to Reading 

 to meet the buyers. 



But the Cheviot ewe, offering a lamb and fleece for sale every summer, found its way to 

 the Exmoor pastures, and entered into competition with the pony, which required three or 

 four winters before he came to the hammer. The black cattle have given way to the Cheviots, 

 and the ponies are reduced to a decreasing herd of about forty head, which, instead of finding 

 themselves as of yore, masters of the position, eke out a grudged existence among increasing 

 thousands of Scotch sheep tended by Border shepherds. 



In i860* the tenant of an Exmoor farm tried to breed Galloways between 13 hands 2 inches 



and 14 hands. With this view he employed as a sire a son of Old Port, the diminutive progeny of 

 Sir Hercules and Beeswing, and afterwards the celebrated pony sire Bobby, who was descended 

 through two degrees on his dam's side from Borack, an Arab of celebrity on the Madras 

 racecourse, the sire of some of the best ponies sold at the sales of Mr. Mihvard of Thurgarton 

 Priory. But the experiment was not a success, for the foals required to be wintered in paddocks 

 and fed with hay as two-year-olds, and, being necessarily reared on the improved lands, cost 

 as much to breed as would have produced larger and more valuable animals. 



The true original Exmoor ponies, which were foaled and fed on the moor without any 

 other food than they could pick up in winter on the moors after the Exmoor sheep had 

 been removed to their winter quarters in the surrounding parishes, and which in hard winters 

 sometimes perished of starvation, belonged to Sir Thomas Acland, who for many years 

 rented the forest from the Crown. They are still bred uncrossed by the present Sir Thomas 

 Acland, but without much improvement either in size or value, at Winsford Hill. 



In 1864, when the E.xmoor ponies were sold at Reading, three unbroken geldings averaged 



* 



* " Scott and Sebriglit.' 

 C C 



