76 THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 



trace of Arab blood, and their height at the shoulder ranges 

 from 54 to 58 inches (13*2 to 14/2 hands); so the results of 

 the cross are still apparent in size as well as in build. 



SHETLAND PONIES 



No race of horses stands higher in the affection of the 

 Scottish people than the " Shelties " or " Shulties " of the 

 Shetlands (Fig. 17). Their neatness and grace no less than 

 their gentleness and docility have contributed to this popu- 

 larity, and to these they add the distinction of long lineage. 

 Strangely enough, though remains of horses are common 

 in prehistoric and early historic dwellings in Orkney, relics 

 of the early horses of Shetland have come to light in only one 

 excavation in the kitchen-midden of the " Pictish Tower" 

 or broch at Jarlshof, Sumburgh, explored in 1911; but these 

 Professor Ewart regards as sufficient to indicate a pony of 

 ancient type not more than twelve hands high the earliest 

 known representative of the "sheltie." The characteristics of 

 the early race are indicated in a figure of a small horse sculp- 

 tured in relief on the early Christian monument of Bressay, 

 which probably belonged to a period between the ninth and 

 eleventh centuries. The evidence of these discoveries makes 

 it tolerably certain that Shetland had its native race of ponies 

 before the invasions of the Norsemen in the ninth and suc- 

 ceeding centuries. However closely the prehistoric pony of 

 the Shetland Isles may have approached in character the 

 slender-limbed Celtic pony of the Ice Age, it is clear that the 

 incursions and settlement of the Scandinavians must have 

 influenced its later history. For with them they brought 

 their own Norse ponies, small, hardy, stout-limbed, yellow- 

 dun animals, which, reared under similar stern conditions of 

 food and climate, would be able to survive in islands which 

 have proved fatal to most other introduced breeds. So it 

 came to be that before written history took up the tale of 

 the shelties, the original race of the "plateau" type already 

 contained an admixture of Norse blood of the heavier 

 "forest" type. 



The earliest description with which I am acquainted is 

 that of Jerome Cardan, an Italian doctor, who spent a few 

 weeks in Scotland in the summer of 1552, and was struck 



