for which trotters are preferable to pacers. To whatever cause it is due, the decline of the breed must be regretted. It is doubtful whether it can ever be renewed or replaced, and it was undoubtedly a pure race of rare powers.
THE MEXICAN MUSTANG AND NORTHERN INDIAN PONY.
We have treated of the principal races of ponies peculiar to the Old World, and to those more particularly which are remarkable for good qualities and are worthy of cultivation. We now come to the ponies of our own continent. For although it is not to be denied that the horses of America are all, in the beginning, traceable to a foreign origin, and although we have no distinct breed or family of the full-sized horse which is not distinctly to be traced back to some one particular European family, of which it still preserves the principal characteristics, we have certainly two families of ponies which, though they are probably to be discovered originally in two European breeds of larger size, differ from the original type so widely that they may now be set down as distinct. These are the Mexican Mustang and the Indian pony of the north, which are in themselves distinct breeds, although there is undoubtedly growing up a hybrid race between the two.
The Mustang of the Mexican and Texan prairies, where it has spread over much of the western country beyond the Mississippi, is clearly of Spanish origin, and both has and shows a considerable share of Moorish blood. It is under-sized, very slight-limbed, and often ill and disproportionately made, with the neck or the back, or both, far too long for either symmetry or strength. Their hoofs are often very badly formed, and their posteriors are generally weak, long and slender. On the other hand, they show blood in the shape and setting on of their lean, long heads,
