The early records show very low prices for ponies. The ‘Statistical Account,’ 1845, places them at from £1, 10s. to £5; “The Druid,” in 1865, sets the value of horses at £7, and of mares at £5;[44] and even in 1871, when the coal-pits had been using Shetland ponies for twenty years, Cowie valued the horse at £8 to £10, and the mare at £3 to £5. Such prices bear no relation to those of recent years, when good stallions have realised from £18 to £20 for pit work, while better ponies, when fully pedigreed, command very much larger prices. At the earlier rates ponies can have yielded but a poor profit; but under recent conditions they must give a large return on the comparatively small cost of breeding and rearing them in Shetland; and this increasing profit encourages the hope that crofters and others in Shetland may be more energetic in the future than they have been in the past, in improving the pony which is one of the best assets of their Islands. THE FETLAR PONY. The Island of Fetlar contains, besides pure Shetland ponies, a distinctive breed of its own. The Fetlar pony is not, indeed, of pure race. Its origin is traced to an animal which has often been called a “mustang,” but was in point of fact a grey Arab, presented by the famous General Bolivar to the late Sir Arthur Nicolson. From 1837 onwards, for some years, this horse was crossed with the native ponies of the Island, which were presumably somewhat larger than those of other parts of Shetland, Fetlar being one of the best grazings in the Islands. For many years the influence of this horse showed itself in a large proportion of grey ponies in Fetlar. Later, another Arab was introduced; and an Orkney garron cross was also used. The resulting product is a pony of about twelve hands—ranging from eleven to thirteen—from which the grey colouring is now practically eliminated. The ponies bred in this way show a degree of unity in type and size which is truly remarkable, in view of the apparently very different sources from which they are sprung. Indeed, the singular fidelity to type of this essentially cross-bred pony is highly suggestive of a common element in the ancestry of the Arab and the Shetland pony. The Fetlar is, in type and quality, one of the best of native ponies. It has a good deal in common with the ponies of the outer Hebrides. CHAPTER III. The Modern Pony. The Shetland pony, as now produced on the British mainland, is chiefly derived from the stud established by the Marquis of Londonderry in the Islands of Bressay and Noss in 1870,[45] and carried on by him there under the management of Mr Robert Brydon and the late Mr Meiklejohn until its dispersal in 1899. It was in this stud that the standard was set by which showyard judging has proceeded during the last twenty years; and it was here also that the type of the modern pony was created and fixed by selection and close inbreeding.