It would be difficult to name a class of work in which the pony is not employed. He is used by all, from the sovereign to the peasant and costermonger. Pony racing has been recently re-established as a sport after temporary suspension, due to no shortcoming on the pony’s side. It is rare that a meet of hounds is not attended by a sprinkling of ponies carrying future sportsmen and women, and it is safe to assert that every master of hounds and every man who takes his own line across country served his apprenticeship to the saddle on the back of a pony. The reason is that few men who do not learn to ride in early boyhood, when a pony is the only possible mount, completely master the art in later life; hence we meet few good horsemen who do not receive their first riding lessons on a steady pony. There is no stamp of vehicle which is not drawn by ponies. Her Majesty, for many years, drove a pony in her garden-chair; in double or single harness we find the pony driven in victoria, dog-cart, governess cart, and Irish car; in the tradesman’s light van and in the market cart drawing wares of every description; in the itinerant fishmonger’s, coster’s and hawker’s nondescript vehicle. The country clergyman and doctor would be in sore straits without the thirteen hand pony, which does a horse’s work on one-half a horse’s feed, and requires no more stable attendance than the gardener or handy man can spare time to give him. As shown in the foregoing pages, his labours are not confined to saddle and harness; in some parts of the country he is still used for pack-work, carrying agricultural produce and peats from the hills and moorlands to the farmstead; and in the low seams of the coal-pits which the horse cannot enter he is indispensable. Large though our native stock of ponies is, we do not breed them in numbers nearly sufficient for our needs, and each year brings thousands of small cheap ponies to our ports from Norway, Sweden and Russia. These, like the gangs purchased from breeders on Exmoor and elsewhere, are driven from one fair to another, to be sold by twos and threes all over the country by persons who cannot afford to keep a horse, but are obliged to provide themselves with a cheap and useful beast for draught or carriage. [Illustration: _Engraved by F. Babbage._ THE FIRST LEAP. From the picture by Sir EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A.]