262 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 ApRin, 1902. 
The Horse. 
THE PONY: ITS BREEDING FOR ARMY PURPOSEs. 
By Sir RICHARD D. GREEN PRICE, Bart. 
The pony, beloved in our boyhood and worthily esteemed in our middle age, 
disdained in our youth, tolerated in later life, has suddenly sprung into an 
importance such as, when I penned an article many years ago in the pages of 
Baily’s Magazine on its virtues, was quite unexpected. His admirers are now 
many, his historians are great, and his value has increased ; so much so that 
the preservation of his breed by the registration of pedigrees in a stud-book has 
been undertaken, and is progressing most satisfactorily, and a strong society has 
been formed for his improvement. 
No doubt we have to thank the advance of the game of polo as an aristro- 
cratic national game for this boom in ponies. And yet this is not all. Tt has 
been discovered (as I contend it ought to have been long ago) that ponies are 
an essential factor in modern warfare. The subject of small horses in warfare 
has lately been so ably handled by Sir Walter Gilbey that I need not venture 
to quote better authorities than he gives to strengthen our arguments in favour 
of ponies in warfare. 
In addition to this I have many personal assurances from officers in the 
army, and men fresh from South Africa itself, that without their ponies the 
Boers would long ago have been conquered, and that those in our colonial and 
Lovatt’s Scouts’ ranks have been of the greatest value to our service. Tt was: 
only a few weeks since that I had the testimony of my son, an Imperial Yeoman, 
who has been through the whole campaign, and who, writing home, said :— 
“You are doing good work in strongly advocating the use of ponies in our arm 
service ; they have fairly outlasted the bigger horses in this campaign, and 
without the aid of our mounted men the infantry would have been unable to 
tackle the Boers. They (the infantry) have been marched to death in the 
impossible task of cornering a well-mounted enemy, and in this the Yeomanry 
and colonials have been invaluable.” 
It would have been well for us had we purchased in the first instance 
Basuto ponies instead of leaving them for the Boers to become possessed of, 
The authorities have imported to South Africa some 20,000 small horses from 
South America, besides a large number from Texas, but, according to the best 
opinions that I have been able to glean, they have proved soft beasts, and not 
satisfactory remounts in the great majority of cases. 
: So many reforms are likely to follow in the wake of this great Boer war 
that it is perfectly safe to expect that our heavy cavalry will be almost done 
away with, and that lightness, quickness, and smartness will be the points of 
efficiency to be aimed at. Beyond this it would not surprise me to see one or 
more companies of mounted men attached to every regiment of infantry, and to 
these the pony will be essential. Easy to mount and dismount. easy of carriage, 
of good constitution, of less target for the enemy, and easier obtainable in 
foreign countries than the larger horse, it needs little argument to prove that 
that the pony, not overweighted, will be the exact requirement of our mounted 
infantry. Indeed, I may state as a fact that the War Office have already 
approved the formation of a pony regiment for the district adjoining the New 
Forest in Hampshire. 
Taking all these circumstances into consideration, it stands to reason, as. 
every reader of the Live Stock Journal Almanac must see, that the future 
breeding of our ponies is worthy of much thought, that the supply should keep. 
pace with the demand, and, above and beyond this, that quality and excellence 
should go hand in hand with quantity. 
