THE SHETLANDER, FORESTER, AND WELCH PONEY. 45 



PONIES. 



PONIES are the nani or dwarfs of the horse genus, and probably to be found in 

 every Country which breeds the horse. They are not, on account of their low 

 stature and reduced size, to be estimated as a degenerate race, but in reality, as 

 an established species, ab initio, endowed with their full share, in due proportion, 

 of all the attributes and qualities of their genus. In actual fact, nature seems to 

 have made a decree in their favour, subversive of the rules of proportion, since no 

 horse of sixteen hands in height could travel or race, and carry weight for inches, 

 with a poney of twelve hands. As an example " A countryman about five feet 

 ten inches in height, was employed many years ago, by the Laird of Coll, to ride 

 pest upon a Shetland poney, to Glasgow and Edinburgh, the ordinary weight 

 cariied being sixteen stone. This postman being stopped at a toll bar near 

 Dunbarton, humorously asked, whether he should be obliged to pay toll if he 

 passed on foot, carrying a burden ? Being answered in the negative, he took up 

 horse and bags in his arms and carried them through the bar." At thirteen hands 

 height, the horse becomes a galloway. 



The Plate exhibits from the life, and in their natural state, a Shetlander or 

 poney of the Scotish Isles, a New Forester, and a Welch poney, the last of which 

 ran and won a remarkable race on the road some years since. The original 

 species of India and Guinea, are said to have been of the inferior poney size, 

 scarcely of a stature superior to large dogs, and utterly unlike their hardy fellows 

 of the northern regions, extremely weak, delicate, and mulish ; yet as an excep- 

 tion to this rule, or in consequence of modern improvement, in July 1813, six 

 beautiful grey ponies from Java, were presented to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. 

 A late Traveller in Arabia, vouches for the excellence and hardiness of the small 

 size, or ponies of that breed, having ridden one of them five days over the desert, 

 the saddle, during all that time, not being taken from the horse's back, nor the 

 girths even loosened shameful treatment ! and the corn being lost on the first 

 day, the poor animal had no other nourishment during the following four, but the 

 little grass he could pick up at the different stages. Thus Ponies and - Galloways 

 have held their way, passibus equis, with the sized horses, in all the various uses 

 of business and pleasure. As racers and stallions, some of them have risen to the 

 highest reputation, from the Bald and Mixbury Galloways, and Par ling ton, of 

 former days, to many of our own times. The writer hereof, many years since, 

 knew the Lacemans Poney, which had full speed enough to trot sixteen miles in 



