The Society went to its work with "ears laid back"; but I will mention only two of its achievements. One of these, which will affect the pony's future, so long as ponies be, was an Act of Parliament that enables breeders to clear the Commons of all stallions which a competent committee decides are undesirable. The Common Lands of Wales are so extensive, and comprise so many tracts, that improvement by selection other than nature's is a farce so long as the pasturage is free to any and all. Nature long ago accomplished her best for the Welsh pony, and while he was practically an isolated type it was easy to maintain her standard. But with multifarious breeds and half-breeds in proximity, the carelessness of man was beginning to undo her work, and Wales might have followed Ireland in the deterioration of her pony stock and the loss of a fixed type, if the Society had not actively intervened. The struggle over the Act was discouragingly prolonged, for Taffy is sometimes stubborn, and he could not see that the right to use the Commons would still be a right if it were limited by consideration for one's neighbors. His beast might be as poor a thing as he pleased—sickle-hocked, goose-rumped, tucked up in the brisket, as some of the larger valley-bred ponies were, and, alas, are—but if it could successfully beguile the feminine portion of his neighbor's carefully sorted drove, the helpless neighbor, injured in heart and pocket, had no redress. Finally, after many difficulties, unwearying effort, and a constant display of good nature, the committee secured the passage of the Act and put an end to what one of the overworked members, exasperated to humor, termed the "unlimited liability sire system."
I have mentioned two sections where this system had been brought to a close some years before the passage of the Act. One of these is the Longmynd Range, lying back of Church Stretton, in Shropshire. Though beyond the March, it is practically Welsh in all that concerns its pony interests. The Range covers about seventy square miles, and at the top is a plateau, two thousand feet high, which was a stronghold of the pony before England began to write her history. Deep gullies cut the slopes and widen into ravines, then into valleys. There are crags to climb, and boggy dongas to be avoided. The heather in places is girth-deep, and altogether it is a typical breeding spot of the wild mountain pony. Here we understand how he came by his agility and hardiness, and realize how persistent must be the qualities bred into him by centuries of such environment. In this region it has been the custom for the last twenty-five years to have an annual drive and round-up, when all the ponies are brought down, selected, sorted, the undesirables cast out, and the others, excepting those picked for market, or exchanged for ponies of another run, sent back to freedom. The ponies are not eager to leave their heights, and they give the riders that bring them down an anxious as well as exhilarating time. The "drives" take place in September, and I hope to be at the next one, but whether for the sake of poetry or ponies I don't yet know. I am beginning to believe that they are not unrelatable.
LONGMYND COMMONS
The other section where practically the same system was adopted years ago, is Gower Common, on the Peninsula near Swansea. In this region, as in Longmynd, the standard has been raised in a manner very attractive to the contemplative purchaser; but I would not sound the merits of their ponies above all others, for here and there throughout Wales are breeders who, with difficulty and expense, have individually practiced a system of sorting; and now that the Commons Act has been passed, every one, be he breeder or pony, will have an opportunity to do his best for his country.
The Society's other achievement which I wish to note connects itself with the United States and the mystifying evolution of a new order regulating the certification of those recognized breeds to be accorded exemption from import duty "on and after January 1, 1911." The only thing clear to me in regard to the international reactions involved, is that without the establishment of a Stud Book, and the vigorous registrative activity of the Society's Council, the new order, which recognizes the Welsh pony as a pure breed exempt from duty, would not be in existence, and the same mysterious "rules" and "exceptions" that bewildered breeders previous to 1911 would still be a discouragement to exportation. Whereas all is now plain sailing.
And here is the end of my prologizing. Having finished with his history, I shall be ready in my next to tell you something of the pony himself. In this letter I have only tried to uncover some of the influences that have made him what he is to-day—in beauty an Arab, in constitution an original pony. There was, first, his early purity of type as a descendant of the true pony that homed in these lands. It has been said that when Henry the Eighth passed his law for the extermination of all horses below an approved stature, some of the lowland ponies, scenting danger and led by equine Tells and Winkelrieds, retreated to the mountain fastnesses, defied the throne of England, and became the Welsh mountain pony. This is a mistake. The ponies scattered through the Shires were weedy stunts of horse breeds from which all trace of the Pony Celticus had long disappeared; and if any of the persecuted beasts gained the regions of safety that lay cupped in the lofty hollows of the Welsh slopes, they found native occupants before them. But I cannot believe that the mountain stock ever received this dreggy mixture from the Shires. In spite of his ancient and resisting lineage, such adulteration would have left its mark on the pony's conformation, as, for instance, the large ears of the Dartmoor, or the coarse heads of the Fell ponies. Doctor Johnson suggested (not confidently, I admit) that the word "pony" came from "puny," and was applied to the creatures so stigmatized because they were puny degenerates of a nobler breed. Though he was wrong philologically, we have no reason to doubt that he knew the lowland pony of his times; and when I come across the implication that these "degenerates" escaped hostile hands, scaled unaccustomed heights, and became the ancestors of the Welsh pony, with all his invincibilities, it simply puts my back up.
