1 Msr., 1898.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 185 
Horse-breedine. 
CROSS-BREEDING. 
By ‘‘ ARAB.” 
Tar the superiority of the Shetland and other Scottish Island ponies is 
derived from the same Arab source from which the Clydesdale inherits his 
merits, there is no reason to question. Some authorities have ascribed the 
evident blooded origin of those ponies to Barbs which swam ashore from the 
wrecks of the ships of the Spanish Armada. 
Let us grant that a Barb or Barbs did get ashore from the Armada. 
Would this account for the total effacement of the old British or Celtic type 
‘and colours in the ponies of the Scottish Islands, the varied colours of which 
to-day prove the high order of their improvement, and show distinctly how 
far they are removed from the Welsh, Norwegian, or other native breeds ? 
Anyone who has a practical knowledge of the prepotency of the old 
British types must answer in the negative. 
Had the Islands of Scotland at the time of the Spanish Armada been 
stocked with old British types such as the Welsh pony, the Barbs of the: 
Armada would simply have been absorbed by the greater prepotency of the 
native breed. 
When we consider what one Welsh pony effected in the West Moreton 
district of Queensland, overlaying its taffy colour for forty years on such 
numbers of our horses, saddle and draught, we can realise how little effect a 
stray Barb or two could have in overlaying and effacing a native breed of such 
prepotency. 
That the improvement of the Island ponies was effected at the same time as 
the horses of the mainland—that the old British type was overlaid and effaced 
throughout Scotland at one and the same time—goes without saying. That 
this has resulted beneficially to its horse stock and preserved it from subsequent 
deterioration is apparent. It rendered it impossible to do anything but breed 
true to one type. The fact that this type was the Arab type, beyond which 
improvement has been unable to reach, is reason sufficient to explain why the 
Shetland and the Clydesdale are justly held to have no compeers—the one as 
a pony, that looks a big horse; the other as a big horse, that looks a pony. The 
horse of Scotland being overlaid with Arab, and all trace of old British blood 
being effaced, has resulted in Scotland being saved from the evils arising from 
crossing the straight formation—with its many attendant defects—on the oblique 
formation of the Arab. ‘The defects in the Percheron, Belgium, Suffolk Punch, 
Norfolk Trotter, and Shire breeds of horses, when judged from Arab or Scotch 
standards, are very much in evidence, and Englishmen are but slowly being 
enlightened to the fact that they exist. Many Australians are in a like position. 
They cannot apprehend that they are working with a low class of horse stock, 
deteriorated by cross-breeding formations. 
I have endeavoured to show that in Scotland horses, for every purpose, 
of a most superior order have been bred on purely Arab lines. Their supe- 
riority for every purpose for which they have been raised has never been 
seriously challenged. They have never been divided into nor classed ag 
separate breeds; ponies, hunters, carriage horses, and plough horses have been 
bred from the common stock of the country, and no arbitrary, defined, or dis- 
tinctive breeds haye been set up. Some attempt has, during this century, been . 
