I.—THE HERD
One hot June afternoon, a group of ponies with their foals and yearlings stood on the edge of a tableland or “plain” in the New Forest. The ground about them was covered with stunted heather and fern, with here and there patches of moss and bare white gravel showing the poverty of the soil.
Beyond the company was a great expanse of blue sky flecked with pinkish cloudlets, and, on the horizon, blue and violet wooded heights, a crinkly contour denoting oak and beech and an evenly serrated line, plantations of firs. As everyone who has journeyed from Southampton to Bournemouth by road or rail knows, a great part of the forest is open heath or moorland; but, unlike the barren wilds of the Highlands, the New Forest has also extensive woods full of gigantic oaks and beeches, while the open ground in many places is becoming choked with self-sown firs.
Therefore, looking into the distance, the masses of woodland largely concealed the open spaces. Emery Down showed on the horizon, the sun fell on the spire of Lyndhurst Church, and in the middle distance a white curving ribbon showed itself as a forest road, before it was lost among the trees.
Below the ponies was a wide valley, covered with coarse grass, and dotted with hollies, gorse and stunted firs. The mares had chosen the hill for their afternoon siesta because up there were fewer flies and biting torments than down below in the swampy bottoms, where, earlier in the day, the ponies had been feeding. They stood mostly in pairs, head to tail, so that the swish of the latter drove the flies from their noses and flanks. Once in a while, a yearling—that is, one born the previous year—finding the sun too hot, butted in between the mares.
The foals or “suckers” lay half-hidden in the heather, wandered here and there nibbling at the herbage, or drew nourishment from their mothers. These varied greatly in colour and size. The tallest was a black mare with the graceful lines of the racehorse, as well there might be, seeing she had some of the blood of that breed in her veins. Next her stood an old white mare, bleached with age, for, while the forest ponies exhibit the usual equine diversity of hues, there are none all white. In her prime she had been a grey, perhaps a beautiful pearl grey with a few darker dapplings, like her neighbour, a young mare with her first foal, black of coat except for a white forehead blaze and fore-foot. Close by stood, and dozed, a chestnut mare with a mane and tail of pure gold, or so it seemed in the sunshine. There were also bays, with black manes and tails, but the commonest colour in the group was a dark brown. It was noticeable that most of the foals were darker in colour than their mothers.
Standing by themselves were two dingy brown ponies, a mare and a two-year-old, shorter of leg than the other adults. Their necks showed little of the arch of a well-shaped animal—indeed, both ponies were almost donkey-like in shape, with hollow backs, drooping bellies, and “cow-hocked” hind-legs. The mare had a beard hanging below her chin.
Almost their exact counterpart, even to the beard, had been set down, ages before, in the wall-paintings and drawings scratched on bone of the old Stone Age. These two, one might suppose, were throw-backs to the old forest pony, which was hunted, or possibly domesticated, by the men whose remains were interred in the mounds dotted over the forest. Indeed, close by stood a great tumulus, and some way off was a group of nine mounds, big and little, like parents and children.