BREEDING PONIES. 121 



Exmoor, thanks to Sir Frederick Knight 

 and Mr. Smith, are now better than the 

 Dartmoor, and I rather prefer either to the 

 New Foresters.* If not quite so big, they 

 have prettier, lirighter heads, and I think 

 are even hardier and more sure of foot, the 

 sheltered lawns and heath-clad slopes of 

 the Forest affording greater protection and 

 easier going than the steep tors and rock- 

 strewn combes of the wild western moors. 

 With the Welsh ponies I am less familiar, 

 but many think them better than any ; 

 while the Scotch Galloway mare, if she 

 still exists in her integrity, must, I should 

 fancy, be very hard to beat. Young ponies 

 should be reared on as hilly and broken 

 ground as possible, lest they lose one of 



* A ISouth-country dealer with whom I talked lately 

 told me he considered the New Forest pony the best of 

 the three breeds, on the grounds that it had more fire 

 and spirit ; and certainly the two I have now are full 

 of it, as were those I rode in my boyhood. Still, I fancy 

 he did not know the others so well. 



