It is very generally admitted that the intelligence of the pony is of higher degree than that of the horse; and the fact, we cannot doubt, is attributable to the different conditions under which ponies and horses are reared. The former, foaled and brought up on the hills and wastes, develope ability, like other wild animals, to look after themselves, and the intelligence so evolved is transmitted to generations born in domestication. The horse, foaled and reared in captivity, with every precaution taken for his security, has no demands made upon his intelligence, and his mental faculties remain to a great extent undeveloped. The same causes operate to furnish the pony’s stronger constitution and greater soundness; greater soundness not only in limb but also organic; roaring and whistling are unknown in the pony, common as they are in the horse.
This superiority of constitution accounts for the marked superiority of the pony over the horse in endurance. The small and compact horse is always a better stayer than the large, loosely-built animal, and in the pony we find the merits of compactness at their highest. Numberless instances of pony endurance might be quoted, but two or three will suffice. Reference has been made on p. 30 to Sir Charles Turner’s achievement of riding a pony ten miles and over thirty leaps in forty-seven minutes, and to the conveyance of news from Holyhead to London by relays of ponies at the rate of twenty miles an hour. Whyte, in his History of the British Turf, states that in April, 1754, a mare, 13 hands 3 inches high, belonging to Mr. Daniel Croker, travelled 300 miles on Newmarket Heath in 64 hours 20 minutes; she had been backed to perform the journey in 72 hours, and therefore completed her task with seven hours and forty minutes to spare. Her best day’s work was done on Tuesday, April 23. Mr. Whyte gives the following details of this extraordinary performance:—“24 miles and baited; 24 miles and baited; 24 miles and baited; 36 miles without baiting; total 108 miles. On the Monday and Wednesday she covered 96 miles each day. She was ridden throughout by a boy who scaled 4 stone 1 lb. without reckoning saddle and bridle. Another performance worth citing as proof of pony endurance was Sir Teddy’s race with the London mail coach to Exeter, a distance of 172 miles. Sir Teddy, a twelve hand pony, was led between two horses all the way, and carried no rider himself. He performed the journey in 23 hours and 20 minutes, beating the coach by fifty-nine minutes.”
We generally find that great feats of endurance, involving capacity to thrive on poor and scanty food, have generally been performed by ponies.[9] In the Nile Campaign of 1885 the 19th Hussars were mounted on Syrian Arabs, averaging 14 hands, which had been purchased in Syria and Lower Egypt at an average price of £18. The weight carried was reduced as much as possible in view of the hard work required of the ponies, but each of the 350 on which the Hussars were mounted carried about 14 stone. Their march from Korti to Metammeh as part of a flying column showed what these little horses could do; between the 8th and 20th of January, both days included, they travelled 336 miles; halting on the 13th. On the return March from Dongola to Wady Halfa, 250 miles, after nearly nine months’ hard work on poor food they averaged 16 miles a day, with one halt of two days. Colonel Burrow, in reviewing the work performed by these ponies, says: “Food was often very limited, and during the desert march, water was very scarce. Under these conditions I venture to think that the performances of the regiment on the Arab ponies will compare with the performance of any horsemen on record.”[10]
[9] See Small Horses in Warfare. By Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. Vinton & Co., Ltd., 1900.
[10] The XIXth and Their Times, Colonel John Biddulph. Murray, 1899.
Captain Fred Burnaby, in his well-known work “A Ride to Khiva,” bears witness to the wonderful endurance of a fourteen-hand Tartar pony which he purchased with misgivings for £5, in default of any better mount. This pony, he tell us, was in such miserable condition, his men complained among themselves that it would not be worth eating, they looked upon the little beast as fore-doomed from the moment Captain Burnaby mounted it. Yet this pony, its ordinary diet supplemented by a few pounds of barley daily, carried its rider, who weighed twenty stone in his heavy sheepskin clothes, safely and well over 900 miles of bad roads, often through deep snow, and always in bitterly cold weather, the thermometer being frequently many degrees below zero. On the concluding day of the return journey this pony galloped the last 17 miles in 1 hour and 25 minutes. It would be easy to multiply examples of pony endurance; but we forbear.
The greater stamina of the pony is evidenced in another direction, namely, length of life. Instances in which ponies have attained to a great age are more numerous than those recorded of horses, and further the pony lives longer. Mr. Edmund F. Dease, of Gaulstown, Co. Westmeath, lost a pony in December, 1894, which had reached the age of 39 years; in 1896, Mrs. Pratt, of Low Pond House, Bedale, Yorks, lost a pony mare aged 45 years; on Christmas Day, 1863, there died at Silworthy, near Clovelly in North Devon, a pony which had arrived within a few weeks of his sixtieth year. Accounts of ponies which lived, and in some cases worked, until they reached 40, 38, 37, and 35 years also recur to mind.
There is a degree of cold beyond which the horse cannot exist; and as he approaches the latitude where the limit prevails, the effect of climate is apparent in his conformation.
The frozen and ungenial country of Lapland has its small ponies; they are employed in drawing sledges over the snow and transporting forage and merchandise, which in summer are conveyed in boats. In Iceland he is dwarfed to a Liliputian size, and thriving in the comparatively mild climate of the Shetlands we find a pony smaller than any other in the British Islands.
It would seem from the facts it has been possible to collect that the New Forest, Welsh, Exmoor and Dartmoor, Fell and Connemara breeds of ponies are in their natural state of small value to man, though they owe to the natural conditions under which they exist qualities which may be turned to very valuable account by judicious crossing with breeds of a recognised stamp. Improvement must involve partial sacrifice of qualities such as ability to withstand exposure and cold on insufficient food, sure-footedness, and the sagacity which avoids bog and treacherous ground. These qualities, in their highest development, are indispensable to a wild animal; but the improved pony obtained by crossing is not destined for a wild life on the hills and wastes, and is less dependent upon them.