There is a degree of cold beyond which the horse cannot exist; and as he approaches the latitude where the limit prevails, the effect of climate is apparent in his conformation. The frozen and ungenial country of Lapland has its small ponies; they are employed in drawing sledges over the snow and transporting forage and merchandise, which in summer are conveyed in boats. In Iceland he is dwarfed to a Liliputian size, and thriving in the comparatively mild climate of the Shetlands we find a pony smaller than any other in the British Islands. It would seem from the facts it has been possible to collect that the New Forest, Welsh, Exmoor and Dartmoor, Fell and Connemara breeds of ponies are in their natural state of small value to man, though they owe to the natural conditions under which they exist qualities which may be turned to very valuable account by judicious crossing with breeds of a recognised stamp. Improvement must involve partial sacrifice of qualities such as ability to withstand exposure and cold on insufficient food, sure-footedness, and the sagacity which avoids bog and treacherous ground. These qualities, in their highest development, are indispensable to a wild animal; but the improved pony obtained by crossing is not destined for a wild life on the hills and wastes, and is less dependent upon them. Partial loss of such attributes, therefore, is a price well worth paying for the increased size and better conformation which render the produce suitable for man’s service with the more artificial and luxurious conditions of life inseparable from complete domesticity. The remarkable soundness of limb and constitution, developed by centuries of free life on the hills, are enduring qualities which appear in generation after generation of stock descended on one side from the half-wild breeds; and these are the qualities which above all it is desirable to breed into our horses of all sizes and for all purposes. The advantage to be gained by systematic improvement of these wild breeds of ponies is therefore not by any means advantageous to one side only. The Polo Pony Society at their meeting of 7th December, 1898, resolved to set apart a section of their Stud Book for the registration of Welsh, Exmoor, New Forest and other breeds of ponies; and with reference to this step Lord Arthur Cecil, in his Introduction to the fifth (1899) volume of the Polo Pony Stud Book, says:—