The common and obvious suggestion is that the ponies of Shetland were individually made small by the severity of the conditions under which they lived—that they were and are dwarfs stunted by starvation. But this suggestion is inconsistent with the undeniable result of experience, that the Shetland pony remains small, and indeed shows no tendency whatever to increase in size, when it is reared in Southern climates and generously nourished.
Twenty years ago even so experienced a breeder as Mr Robert Brydon wrote of the South-country studs: “I cannot help pointing out the difficulty their owners will have to contend with in keeping the size within Stud-book requirements.”[26] Experience, however, has shown this to be a wholly groundless fear. The apparent tendency of the breed in England and Scotland is not to increase but rather to diminish in size: the mainland—bred ponies are not larger but smaller than those on the Islands; and perhaps the present danger is that they may become too small for use and perfect symmetry.
The fact is that there have always been small horses in Britain—at all events in Northern Britain. The remains recently found in the Roman camp at Newstead include horse bones which indicate that the native horses there were from 11 to 13 hands in height. In Shetland there have probably never been large horses.
The size of other horses, originally larger, has been gradually increased, partly by crossing and partly by a deliberate artificial selection, until a sustained effort, forming part of a general agricultural development, has eventually produced the Clydesdale and the Shire horse of to-day. Increase of size has always, of course, been subject to the limits imposed by the available food-supply, so that while the Clydesdale has been of comparatively old standing in the Lowlands, a much smaller horse held the field until quite recently in the Highlands and in Orkney; while, within the Highland area itself, the so-called “garron,” of Perthshire and the richer parts of Inverness-shire, has for its Island counterpart the smaller, harder, and more active Hebridean pony. But it is impossible to explain these variations of size and type as the direct product of liberal or scanty feeding, although it is no less impossible to disregard the limiting influence of local conditions which prescribe to each district at each period of its development the size and type of horse which can be maintained in vigour within it. Similarly the Shetland pony is not a horse reduced in size by the scarcity of herbage in Shetland. It is the horse whose type and qualities procured its survival in those Shetland conditions which prohibited any considerable increase in its size.
These same conditions fixed other characteristics as well. They prescribed and produced a degree of vigour and robustness fitted for the maintenance of life in adversity, and for the performance of feats of labour and endurance apparently impossible for so small a physical frame: the “mettall past belief” is the mark of a survivor in hard circumstances. They gave a great advantage to individuals sheltered by abundant mane and tail, and, above all, by that waterproof double coat of thick fur and long hair which alone can maintain warmth in wind and rain and mist. They favoured that docility and sweetness of temper which make the Shetland pony more truly domestic than any other horse, because they made it essential that the pony should live in intimate dependence on its owner; and these qualities of disposition find their expression in the small ear and the large soft full eye which are so characteristic of the breed.
The Shetland pony as every one knows it—small, robust, gay, shaggy, alert, strong of bone, short-eared, large-eyed—is the product of natural conditions and human needs in Shetland; and it is a definite race, established by long selection, having characteristics indelibly fixed. It has already been said that within this unity of race there remains real and very considerable variety of type—a variety hardly less great than that which we find between larger breeds of horses; and the fact that the various types do not breed true, but are interchangeable, points to a far-back mixture of races. Yet, in its widely varying developments, the pony remains a fixed breed; and so long as its racial purity is retained its virtues are ineradicable.