1909-10.] Restoration of an Ancient British Race of Horses. 303 
“ Elephant Bed ” or Solutre type, and a fine-limbed race characterised by a 
fine muzzle and short-pillared molars, a race (like asses and zebras) without 
hind chestnuts and (unlike asses and zebras and the wild horse of 
Mongolia) without fetlock callosities or ergots. 
That modern ponies have in part sprung from an almost wartless wild 
race akin to the small Oreston horse is supported by the following experi- 
ments. A black 11 hands Shetland pony from Unst,* with a complete 
set of callosities (four chestnuts and four ergots) and a mere vestige of a 
tail-lock, crossed with a bay 14 hands Arab, with all eight callosities but 
no vestige of a tail-lock, produced a black mare with a tail-lock and only 
minute vestiges of hind chestnuts. 
This Arab-Shetland cross, bred in 1906 with a 14 hands chestnut 
Arab (Parakh) having large hind chestnuts and well-developed ergots, 
produced a black mare in which the hind chestnuts and all four ergots are 
absent. I can only account for the sudden disappearance of the ergots 
(never hitherto found absent in asses or zebras or in the wild horse of 
Mongolia) and of the hind chestnuts (present in all the wild horses of 
Mongolia, all the Shires and Clydesdales, and all but one of the thorough- 
breds examined) by assuming they were absent or represented by minute 
vestiges in the wild ancestors from which the Shetland pony mare and the 
two Arab stallions had in great part descended. 
In the Arab-Shetland first crosses the cannon bones are shorter and 
broader than in the 12 2 hands Newstead pony, and the neck is somewhat 
short ; but in an Arab-Shetland-Connemara mixture (fig. 25) the teeth and 
cannon bones are practically identical with those of the fine-limbed New- 
stead horse, and the neck (which usually bears an intimate relation to the 
length of the fore limbs) is as long as in small Arabs. 
It thus appears that by mixing the blood of Connemara, Shetland, and 
Arab ponies, animals are soon obtained which in the teeth and limbs are 
practically identical with the 12 '2 hands Newstead horse — a horse which 
in its molars agrees with the small fossil Oreston race, and in its cannon 
bones with the fine-limbed fossil horse of Kent’s Cave, Torquay. 
It is of course impossible to ascertain the colour of the Oreston horse 
or to determine whether it had an upright mane like Prjevalsky’s horse, or 
a long mane clinging to the neck as in Arabs. 
It is generally assumed that in the wild horses of prehistoric times the 
mane was short and upright. 
In the Arab-Shetland crosses the mane is long and fine, and it is also 
* This pony, bred by the late Kev. J. Ingram, Unst, probably includes an Arab or a 
Barb amongst its ancestors. 
