The Horse Lover's Miscellany

2

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY

Around 50 million years ago, a small animal around the size of a hare lived in swamps and it is thought to be an early ancestor of the horse. It had four toes on each of its front feet and three each on the back, each toe ending in a hoof. Known by scientists and biologists as either Sifrhippus or Eohippus (the latter moniker given to them by the American palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh), evidence of their evolutionary connection to the modern-day equine is thought to be found in the 'chestnut' - the small lumpy protuberance on the inside of the legs - and in the 'ergot', the little growth to be found on the back of the fetlock joints. These, it is said, are all that is left of the toes of the animal that lived all those millennia ago - and which would eventually become the horses, ponies and donkeys (and zebras!) that we know and love today.

The north-south divide

Giving her take on the development of the horse over millennia, in 1944, Judith Blunt-Lytton, 16th Baroness Wentworth, was of the opinion that the original wild stock of the world could be divided into two distinct types:

The Northern Type

The rock pictures of Southern Europe (possibly dating from 50,000 years ago show . cold-blooded, heavy-boned, rather asinine horses . with small angular sleepy eyes placed high in a convex skull with shallow jaw; they had much coarse hair, erect manes and low tail-carriage. This coarse-fibred, phlegmatic, thick-haired, thick-skinned ram-headed, slow breed with all its variations and its descendants can be classed as Equus Frigidus; and to it belong the prehistoric Great Horse of Europe, the big Battle Horse, our own Carthorse, the Mongolian and the Germanic horses of the smaller type, and some of the European ponies.

The Southern Type

This hot-blooded, highly strung, light-limbed, concave-headed breed, with its derivations, is native to the warm sunny climates of the south and east. Only one example of this appears in European rock paintings in the form of a speckled pony; the pure Arabian only appears in the rock carvings of Arabia (where it is often depicted galloping with a rider carrying a spear) and of Egypt (1800 BC) where it is shown both ridden and driven. The Arabian horse, Equus Arabicus, is the root stock from which all the various Southern varieties are derived. It is the source of all pure breeding and the root stock also of the racing type being the earliest known racehorse.

Small but perfectly formed

Archaeologists have done much to help determine just how equines have developed over millennia. Excavations in the ancient city of Pompeii, for example, have discovered many remains of donkeys and mules and, in 2018, the complete body of a horse lying where it was trapped in its stable as the weight of the volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius covered all of this famous city. Their research was able to establish it was definitely the body of a horse rather than a donkey or mule but that, compared to the modern-day horse, it was quite small, standing at around 1.5 metres (4.9 feet) at the shoulder. Laura Geggel, writing for the popular science website Live Science, reported that, according to archaeologists with Parco Archeologico di Pompei, which excavated the site: '. it's likely that this horse was part of a noble breed of horses that took part in circus games and races during the time of the Roman Empire.'

Much closer to home, also in 2018, at Pocklington, East Yorkshire, archaeologists uncovered a Celtic site that included a grave dating sometime between 320 and 174 BC. The grave was found to contain not only the bones of a warrior but also personal artefacts, a chariot and the skeletons of two ponies. Although equines were rarely included in Iron Age burials, the fact that both ponies had been buried upright between the chariot shafts made the find even more unusual.

Golden slippers

How and when horseshoes first began to be used around the world is open to conjecture. The ancient Greeks and some civilisations seemingly tried to protect the hooves of the animals which pulled their carts by either means of a boot laced around the hoof or with 'shoes' made from leather or rope. It's said that the Roman Emperor Nero had a chariot drawn by mules with shoes of silver while his consort Poppaea had her chariot team shod with shoes of gold.

Far more recently, before the advent of the motor lawnmower, a donkey was often used by many country house gardeners to pull a set of mowers. With an immaculate sward being the required result, the donkey's hooves were covered by specially made leather boots in order to prevent unwanted divots.

Who's in charge?

When living in a herd, it's often thought that it will be the strongest stallion that is in charge but some who have spent a great deal of time watching and understanding equines in a group situation consider that, a little like elephants in the wild, equines actually live in a matriarchal society. Ben Atkinson - of Atkinson Action Horses - gives amazing displays of horsemanship both nationally and internationally and is of the opinion that 'they will choose their lead mare because she makes the best decisions. When it rains, she takes them to shelter. When it's dry, she knows where the watering hole is. She's elected [by the herd] for her longstanding good decisions .'

A mixing of breeds?

From Country Life, 18 September 1897:

On Exmoor there are traditions about Spanish blood, and on Dartmoor they tell you of horses escaped from vessels belonging to the Spanish Armada which were wrecked on the coast of Devonshire. Nothing was more likely than that the ponies would stray over when they felt inclined for a change of run. But I think it by no means improbable that there has been a mixture of the breeds later than that, and of perhaps quite recent date. It is not a far cry from South Molton to Okehampton, the strip which divides the two moors, and what is more likely than that the two breeds should become mixed . Further south, however, they show more difference in type, and they are also on a bigger and sturdier scale . They are very hardy, and so they had need to be, as anyone who has ever been on Dartmoor on a bitter winter day with a northeast wind sweeping across it at top pace will scarcely require telling . No stallion over three years old is allowed on the moor, this perhaps being a survival of the old law of Henry VIII .

Blood transfusion

In Britain there are several breeds of native ponies, among them the Dartmoor, Exmoor, Shetland, Eriskay, Welsh, Highland, Connemara, Fell, Dales and the New Forest. Although often referred to as being 'wild', they are in almost all instances, owned - and turned out to graze for much of the year on the moors and forests by people such as the 'commoners' of the New Forest. Periodic 'round-ups' or gatherings are held, during which the ponies are checked over; ownership established; the more mature foals separated from their mothers, and surplus animals are sold at auction, either as meat or to be broken as riding ponies.

To keep such native breeds genetically healthy, it was occasionally thought necessary by some owners of past generations to outcross their stock in order to introduce new, unrelated blood. As an example of this, in his book Portrait of the New Forest (Robert Hale & Co., 1966), author Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald notes:

In 1891 the Association for the Improvement of the Breed of New Forest Ponies was founded with the object of awarding annual prizes and premiums to stallions after they had been passed by the Verderers to run in the Forest. In 1893 Lord Arthur Cecil, believing that the best way of ensuring improvement was by introducing fresh blood of other mountain and moorland breeds, began importing stallions from Dartmoor, Exmoor, the Fells, the Highlands and Wales . for many years afterward, it can be safely said that the New Forest pony was a real mongrel. Moreover, the introduction of new blood was not always successful and there were many poor, weedy specimens in the Forest.

Not so common

In the New Forest, a 'commoner' is someone who has land or property with ancient forest rights to 'depasture' or graze animals (cattle, ponies, donkeys, pigs and, in some areas, sheep) on the Forest. The rights stay with the property, not the person and not all houses come with rights so it's not as simple as buying a pony and just letting it out of the gate to do as it will. Helen Safe has lived in the New Forest all her life - and has commoners' rights: '. you have to brand it, be capable of going out and catching it if there is a problem (it took us eighteen months to catch one once!) and have somewhere suitable to keep it if it has to come in. A lot of houses with forest rights have no ground to go with them nowadays.'

Although Helen has traditional commoners' rights, she no longer allows her donkeys to graze where the public have access: 'There are real problems with the public feeding and encouraging them onto the roads - people used to queue up to buy ours ice creams from the shops and kiosks!'

Drifting, learing and hefting

Anyone with ancient commoners' rights to graze livestock, in particular the native ponies of the New Forest, has a duty of care and, like all animal owners, a responsibility to ensure that their ponies are in good health at all times. In...