“I think what first interested me so much in these ponies was that, as long ago as I can remember anything, I heard my father describing them to old Lord Cowley and the Duke of Wellington. He told them how like the Spanish horses he had thought the ponies in 1845; and mentioned how he had turned down a stallion on the island and a Spanish jackass—some of the mules are still (1889) at Hatfield. He also said that he saw no reason why they should not be descended from some of the Spanish Armada horses which were wrecked on that coast. When the ponies—most of them stallions—came to Hatfield in 1862, I remember some of them broke out of the station; it took several days to catch them again. They were almost unbreakable, but my brother, Lionel, and I managed to get two of them sufficiently quiet for _us_ to ride, though they would not have been considered safe conveyances for an elderly gentleman. We were never quite sure of their age, but they must have been nearly thirty when they died. I believe my father had intended these ponies to be kept entire, but they were so hopelessly savage they had to be cut. They could trot twelve miles in fifty-five minutes after they were twenty years old, and could gallop and jump anything in the saddle. “My father’s theory about the Spanish Armada receives curious corroboration in the well-known fact that a galleon lies sunk in Tobermory Bay; while, in the “Armada” number of the _Illustrated London News_ which was published in 1888 (the same year that I bought the ponies), there was a small map which showed the storms off the North and West of Scotland, which are almost exactly coincident with the occurrence of this particular type of pony, though no place was so favourable for breeding a type as a remote island like Rum. “When my mother visited Rum the people of the adjacent island of Canna gave her a pony mare which I also remember, very old, at Hatfield. She was a rich cream colour; she threw a foal which had all the characteristics, the hazel eye, long croup and big head. “I have noticed all the deer-stalking ponies I could see on the look-out for some of these characteristics; but, with the exception of the hazel eye and a somewhat strong inclination towards blackness in colour, I cannot say that I have seen much trace of the same kind of pony on the mainland in Scotland. This, however, is no doubt rather through crossing with other strains than because they have not some of the original blood; and I feel sure that the Galloway of olden days was of the same type, though that term has now come to mean something quite different and in no way connected with the district on the West Coast of Scotland.