The falling off in quality was generally attributed to promiscuous breeding and to in-breeding. “In some parts of Connemara,” said Mr. H. A. Robinson, “they just turn a stallion out loose on the mountains, mongrels of the very worst description.” There is, however, another factor in the loss of quality, namely, the terrible straits to which the peasantry were reduced in the time of the famine. A correspondent informs me that in south-west Cork, in the fifties, nearly all the people had mare ponies; in west Galway in the sixties there was scarcely an ass in Connemara west of Spiddal and Oughterard; and the case in west Mayo was the same. When my informant visited the same districts fifteen or twenty years later, he observed a remarkable change. “Hard times” had come upon the people in the interim, and all the small holders had donkeys instead of ponies; poverty had obliged them to sell their mares; and when times improved they were too impoverished to buy new ponies, and replaced them with asses. Under such circumstances, of course, the better the mare owned by the peasant the more likely it was to find a purchaser; and little but the “rag, tag and bobtail” was left to perpetuate the species. However considerably the remainder depreciated in quality, they still retained their characteristic hardiness of constitution and the germs of those qualities which under better auspices gained the breed its reputation. Some of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Royal Commission mentioned experiments in cross breeding which prove how well and rapidly the Connemara pony responds to endeavour to improve it by the introduction of suitable fresh blood. Mr. Samuel Johnston stated that he had bred one of the best hunters he ever possessed out of a Connemara mare; and Mr. R. B. Begley described a mare got by the pure-bred Hackney sire Star of the West from a “mountainy pony.” This Hackney-Connemara cross could cover an English mile in three minutes; Mr. Begley had driven her fifty-six Irish (over seventy-one statute) miles in a day, and had repeatedly driven her twelve Irish (over fifteen statute) miles in an hour and ten minutes; he had won two prizes with her for action in harness at the Hollymount Show; and had hunted her with ten stone on her back. With hounds as in the shafts this really remarkable pony proved herself able to go and stay, performing well across country.