72 PONIES—THEIR DIFFERENT BREEDS. 



endurance, with greater strength, greater quickness, and 

 more showy action, of their smaller countrymen. 



GALLOWAYS AND NARKAGANSETTS. 



After tTie various descriptions of ponies whicli have been 

 enumerated and described, there is none more worthy of 

 notice than the peculiar race of small horses, rather than 

 what can be exactly classed as ponies, which formerly 

 existed, nearly identical in all their characteristics, in two 

 small districts of Great Britain, wholly unconnected the one 

 with the other, yet, singularly enough, with names so similar 

 as to justify a first idea of their being in some sort similar 

 or identical. . The one of these is the small district of Gallo- 

 way^ on the shores of the Sol way Frith, in the south-west 

 of Scotland. The otlier is a portion of the county of 

 Oalway, in the west of Ireland. The whole width of the 

 Irish Sea and of the island itself lies between the two 

 districts, which have, in spite of their similar names, no 

 connection, whether of origin or of population; yet, 

 strange to say, in each locality there is, or rather was — 

 for they have recently become nearly extinct — a peculiar 

 breed of horses Avholly different and distinct from the 

 native stock, whether of Scotland or Ireland, yet so 

 similar in all their characteristics and qualifications that 

 their identity of origin cannot be doubted. These are the 

 animals which, from the Scottish district on the border of 

 the counties of Wigton and Kirkcudbright, received the 

 name of Galloways, a word which afterward came to be 

 misapplied to small horses of all descriptions. 



In that district they were long famous for their endur- 

 ance, speed, docility and easiness of gait, as well as for 

 their high and courageous spirit; and so long as the 

 country roads and, indeed, the great national thorough- 

 fares of Endand and Scotland were such as to render the 



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