size, but undeteriorated in spirit by years, nay, centuries, of habituation to cold and scanty fare. In Spain there existed from an early date in the middle ages a peculiar breed of very small, high-bred horses, scarcely to be called ponies, known as the Andalusian jennet, the descendants of which are said still to exist in the Connemara horse, peculiar to Galway in Ireland, and to have existed in the Scottish Galloway, on the shores of the Solway Frith, in the south of Scotland, and probably in the Narragansett pacer, both of which families are now unfortunately extinct. These Spanish ponies, or ponies of Spanish descent, are referable to another and entirely different mode of production, by breeding, and not by deterioration in size, or dwarfing. In Asiatic and European Russia, again, the Cossack horse, which is little more than a large pony with good Turkish blood, is evidently the result of modified dwarfing by hardship and severity of climate. It is remarkable, however, of all these European and Asiatic ponies, as also of the American varieties, of which we shall speak hereafter, that, unlike most animals which have degenerated in size, owing to severity of climate and scanty fare, they have lost nothing of their spirit, and—what is yet more singular—have gained rather than lost in their capability to endure toil, hardship, and spare diet, in which particulars the tiny Shetlander and the rugged Cossack will probably surpass any other horses in existence.
Of the Southern Asiatic races comparatively little is known; but it is certain that in Ceylon there is a pigmy race of ponies not exceeding twenty-seven inches in height. A little mare was exhibited in London, in 1765, brought from the East Indies, only twenty-seven inches in height, well-formed, and between four and five years old.
In Persia and among the mountains of Afghanistan, there is found a useful breed of large ponies, called Yauboos,
