Page:Hints to Horse-keepers.djvu/71

 CHAPTER VII. PONIES—THEIR DIFFERENT BREEDS, CHARACTERISTICS AND UTILITY. UNKNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS—ORIGIN—DIFFERENT BREEDS—SHETLAND AND SCOTS—GALLOWAYS AND NARRAGANSETTS—MUSTANGS AND INDIANS—PROFIT OF RAISING PONIES. is very remarkable that these hardy, active, and, in many cases, beautiful little animals appear to have been either absolutely unknown to the ancients, or so much neglected and undervalued by them, as to have obtained not only no special description, but not so much even as a distinctive name in the principal languages of antiquity. In the Hebrew this may be accounted for by the fact, that the soil and surface of Judea were so ill adapted for the employment of the horse, that its use was superseded by that of the ass; which animal, with its strong, hard hoofs and inflexible pastern joints, was better suited to the rocky nature of the ground and the hill fastnesses of Idumea than the nobler horse. This reason, however, in no respect explains why the Greeks and Romans, both of whom most sedulously cultivated the horse, and who, by their writings still extant on the subject of equestrianism, were well informed on all matters connected with that animal, and were good judges of its points according to the received modern ideas, should have no definite word, if indeed any word at all, signifying a pony. In both tongues there is a diminutive of the word horse; in Latin, from equus, equuleus; as also, from  [63]