How they may be Utilised by Pony Breeding. 
499 
there can be no doubt of their standing quite at the top of the 
tree amongst ponies, and this I think points clearly to a very 
early infusion of Eastern blood. The earliest of their race, 
whose history has been recorded, is the most celebrated, and no 
one has ever been in the West Country amongst horse-loving men 
who has not heard of " Katerfelto." Much mystery surrounds 
him, and divers are the legends anent his origin. I presume 
there is no one unacquainted with the grey stallion in VVhyte 
Melville's story of that name, and very poetically conceived is 
the idea of that incomparable horse, and the way in which he 
became a " Forest sire ; " yet I fear we must read it with the 
remembrance of a poet's licence in full view, though the bio- 
grapher of the Rev. J. Russell, in ' Baily's Magazine,' so far en- 
dorses it as to say that he was eventually recaught,'and ended his 
days in the possession of Mr. Russell's family. The latter asser- 
tion of the real, not the poetical, Katerfelto, being probably true. 
That pleasant, though not invariably correct, writer, the 
Druid, says, " Katerfelto's dam, after being stolen by some 
gipsies, was recovered in foal with him to an Arab. Indepen- 
dently of his fine stock, which is still referred to in nearly every 
pedigree, Katerfelto was a mighty hunter, and earned deathless 
glory, both for himself and his owner, a lusty farmer, by taking 
the bit between his teeth on the Barkham Hills, and carrying 
him bodily over a twenty-foot gap in an old Roman iron mine." 
Another account, published, I believe, by a gentleman signing 
himself " North Countryman," in the ' Sporting Gazette,' a few 
years ago, appears to me to bear the strongest stamp of being 
authentic. It is as follows : " Katerfelto was the name of a 
little stallion who filled the south with stout and valuable stock, 
and his history is this : Katerfelto's dam was a beautiful black 
Galloway, belonging to Mr. Abel, a surgeon of Tiverton, in the 
year 1778. She became the property of Mr. Stanell, who bred 
a colt from her by a horse called Sportsman, then covering in 
the parish of Olseford (query. Was Sportsman and the Druid's 
Arab one and the same horse?). At Mr. Stanell's death this colt 
was purchased by an attorney, under a pretended commission 
for the late Sir Thomas Acland, together with a brace of fine 
pointers. A friend of the baronet congratulating him some 
short time after on his well-judged purchase. Sir Thomas thought 
he was bantering, and told him that he had bought neither colt nor 
dogs. The other spoke positively to the property having been 
knocked down to the man of law for Sir Thomas. On dis- 
covering the deception, the worthy baronet realised the joke, 
claimed the colt, and, from the attempted juggle, named him 
Katerfelto, after a character at that period highly celebrated as 
the emperor of conjurors. 
