SMALL HORSES

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 694, 25 June 1903, Page 15

SMALL HORSES

Sir Walter Gilbey has written much on the horse, and all that he has written is worth reading. In a recently-published pamphlet, entitled “ Small Horses in Warfare,” he advocates the breeding of small horses, and Lis arguments apply to more departments in equine usefulness than this particular one of war. The small horse is being disowned on* all hands, and determined- efforts are being made in all quarters to make everything big. A good deal of the bigness obtained is mere legginess and grossness of bone, and this pamphlet should be the means of opening the eyes of more than the purchasers of army remoiints to the wisdom of encouraging the breeding of horses whose chief characteristics are staying power, hardiness, and independence of high feeding. Such horses were demanded during the South African War, and Great Britain had to look for them elsewhere than in the British Isles. Sir Walter’s argument is that the native pony mares of Great Britain, especially of the mountainous parts of Wales, Scotland, and Devonshire, furnish a nucleus from which, by crossing with a stout thoroughbred, or, better still with an Arab; the kind of horses wanted could be easily bred. What is wanted is a miniature hunter. In the course of his argument, Sir Walter Gilbey brings together many illustrations of thp value of stout, native-bred, small horses,' and

their vast superiority for hard work I over the so'-called improved' stock, of the more civilised nations. He makes an j occasional reference to the “ weedy ” I thoroughbred, and any visitor to the • London Show, where the amazing ami mals which the Royal Commission di&i tribute throughout the country to improve the breed of horses are exhibited will agree that the probability of much improvement following their use is ex--1 tremely remote. That acute person, Mr Cecil Rhodes, some years ago expressed the opinion to Sir Walter that no infusion of English blood would enhance the powers of the small colonial-bred horse for the performance of the work which local usage lays upon , him ; and he even had the temerity to deny that any advantage could accrue from the use of the thoroughbred. In, the Sdudan campaign, as the result of costly experierice, the [ regiment which left Cairo was mounted ; entirely on the small Syrian Arab horse, ■ whose average height was 14 hands, their average age from 8 to a years, and i their average price £lB. These did 16 I miles a day across the desert from Wady I Haifa to Korti, and a detachment of 50 jof them performed a journey of 100 miles in reconnaissance duty in 63 hours. On the return fourney six of them did the last 50 miles in seven and a-half hours. Of 350 of these stout little horses used in that hard campaign of nine months across the desert only 12 died from disease, and their performance is justly characterised as a marvel of endurance. They carried a heavy weight on scanty fare, and less water. Small horses (ponies) will beat moderate horses of double their size, and legginess or height is weakness rather than strength. . . . ~ Captain Burnaby’s ride to Khiva ; was a marvel of endurance in the man, but it was, if possible, a greater marvel in the pony which carried him. It is described as ’ a liable black horse, standing 14 hands, and 1 his price at Kasala., including saddle and bridle, was £5 sterling. This sorry-looking jade, which, the captain says, looked as if his boots would have been all that he could carry, bore; his weight of 20st on that memorableride, doing sometimes 4b, miles in six hours, with a thermometer below zero., He, danced about beneath hid rider as if; he had been carrying a feather-weight jockey for the Cambridgeshire. The whole journey of 371 miles was,done in 9 days 2 hours,, or at the average,rate ofmore, than 40 miles a day. The captain’s pony galloped the last 17 miles through the snow to Kasala in 1 hour 25 minutes. On the whole, the net result of a performance of this discription is to awaken very serious misgivings aS to the whole system adopted for the improvement in the United Kingdom and elsewhere of k. the breeds of horses indicated. To quote a reviewer of Sir Walter Gilbey’s brochure : —“ The system of pampering, coddling, and sweating, &c,, to which a fashionable hackney is subjected may produce a very hardy animal, but if it does there must be a very curious relation between cause and effect in the management of horses. And so also with the thoroughbred. It is an old controversy, whether the long-distance or the short-distance race is* the better adapted to produce a hardy horse. There is truth in a saying quoted by Sir Walter Gilbey—that the weedy racehorse is more akin to the greyhound than anything else, and bred for speed alone, and such a horse can never improve anything. He is himself an artificial product, and his adulation is, or ought to be, an exploded superstition.”