The Shetland pony as every one knows it—small, robust, gay, shaggy, alert, strong of bone, short-eared, large-eyed—is the product of natural conditions and human needs in Shetland; and it is a definite race, established by long selection, having characteristics indelibly fixed. It has already been said that within this unity of race there remains real and very considerable variety of type—a variety hardly less great than that which we find between larger breeds of horses; and the fact that the various types do not breed true, but are interchangeable, points to a far-back mixture of races. Yet, in its widely varying developments, the pony remains a fixed breed; and so long as its racial purity is retained its virtues are ineradicable. CHAPTER II. The Pony in Shetland. The Shetland pony is almost more conspicuous in the simple farming economy of his own Islands than other horses are in British agriculture. He has been the constant theme of travellers and dwellers in Shetland; and their references show that he has been a dominant interest there throughout the whole known history of his home. The statements which have already been quoted are continued and corroborated up to our own day; and everywhere we find the same description of the ponies—their small size and their courage and endurance.[27] Typical of many accounts of them is that given by Campbell in 1750. “There are little horses in this Island, which the Inhabitants call Shelties; they are so very small that one may lay his leg over them from the ground; but notwithstanding their Smallness they are both strong and active, and live many years, even till they are blind with Age: I have heard say, some of them live till they are upwards of thirty, and they are never kept within Doors, but are foaled in the Fields, live in the Fields, and die in the Fields. They do little Work, unless it be to carry some Sea Weed, to dung the Ground in the Seed-Time. There is no Horse-hire.”[28] Throughout the narratives of eye-witnesses we find everywhere the fact that the ponies are reared and kept in conditions of great hardship. A Highland Society’s report in 1801 tells us that “the horses live in the open fields, summer and winter, night and day, and never get a mouthful except what they can gather, not even when the ground is covered with snow. At the season of labour they are, of consequence, miserable, lean, and weak; so late as the middle of June they are little else than skin and bone, covered with long hair like goats, yet, even in that situation, their spirit is astonishingly great.”[29]