06 PONIES— THEIR DIFFERENT BREEDS. 



size, but. undeteriorated in spirit by years, nay, centuries, 

 of habituation to cold and scanty fare. In Spain there 

 existed from an early date in the middle ages a peculiar 

 breed of very small, high-bred horses, scarcely to be called 

 ponies, known as the Andalusian jennet, the descendants 

 of which are said still to exist in the Connemara horse, 

 peculiar to Galway in Ireland, and to have existed in the 

 Scottish Galloway, on the shores of the Sol way Frith, in 

 the south of Scotland, and probably in the Narragansett 

 pacer, both of which families arc now unfortunately ex- 

 tinct. These Spanish ponies, or ponies of Spanish descent, 

 are referable to another and entirely different mode of pro- 

 duction, by breeding, and not by deterioration in size, or 

 dwarfing. In Asiatic and European Russia, again, the 

 Cossack horse, which is little more than a large pony 

 Avith good Turkish blood, is evidently the result of modi- 

 lied dwarfing by hardship and severity of climate. It is 

 remarkable, however, of all these European and Asiatic 

 ponies, as also of the American varieties, of which we shall 

 speak hereafter, that, unlike most animals which have de- 

 generated in size, owing to severity of climate and scanty 

 fare, they have lost nothing of their spirit, and — what is 

 yet more singular — have gained rather than lost in their 

 capability to endure toil, hardship, and spare diet, in which 

 particulars the tiny Shetlander and the rugged Cossack will 

 probably surpass any other horses in existence. 



Of the Southern Asiatic races comparatively little is 

 known ; but it is certain that in Ceylon there is a pigmy 

 race of ponies not exceeding twenty-seven inches in height. 

 A little niare was exhibited in London, in 1765, brought 

 from tbf. East Indies, only twenty -seven inches in height, 

 well-fo;:7ned, and between four and five years old. 



In P<'/"jia and among the mountains of Afghanistan, there 

 is foun^J a useful breed of large ponies, called Yauboos, 



