It would appear from this that the selective process by which the small size of the pony has been fixed and exaggerated was not, at this period, one deliberately and consciously promoted, but was contrary to the wishes of those who regarded the interest of the breed, and was the result of economic pressure which encouraged the export of the larger and more valuable ponies, leaving the smaller and cheaper stallions to be employed as stud animals. Larger and not smaller ponies were in point of fact desired; and the decline in size, which seems to have taken place at this period, was a consequence of the poverty and perhaps also of the short-sighted thrift of the crofting owners. This fact, indeed, sets aside the argument of Mr Vero Shaw[33] and others, that the breed must always have been kept pure, because no cross could be used to improve it by reducing its size. The temptation to introduce alien blood came from the opposite motive—a desire to increase size; and when we read that in 1788 “a fine young horse of the Norway breed had perished in a marsh,”[34] we see that the materials for cross-breeding, as well as the motive to practise it, were actually in existence—the results probably remaining in the larger ponies now used for draught in Shetland. It must be observed that a scarcity of really good stallions, probably arising from the same causes as formerly, is still the chief impediment to the improvement of the Shetland pony in his native home. But this cause no longer operates to reduce size, as fashion has created a demand for excessively small ponies, which tempts the poorer owners rather to sell than to keep them. In 1865 we have the first record of an actual attempt to reduce the size of the pony, in the very interesting notes on Shetland pony breeding made by “The Druid” in ‘Field and Fern.’ [Illustration: GOING SOUTH.] “Colonel Balfour, grandfather to the present proprietor of Shapinsay, began pony breeding at the end of the last century. He improved the form; and when the colours did not come as they expected, the natives, with a few drops of whiskey to quicken them, laid the entire blame on Spunky, the Orcadian water-kelpie. “He was black, they say, and the sire of some of the finest original ponies of the islands; and if he was disturbed in his courtships, he vanished under the waves in a mass of blue flame. “The Hellersay stock have been quite able to dispense with him, as North Unst has furnished them with some of its choicest jewels. “Brisk, the chestnut, dates very far back, and headed the Balfour stud for wellnigh thirty years, and his brother Swift was in the flesh for nearly forty-six.