With these precautions and with ordinary care Shetland ponies give little trouble or anxiety so far as their health is concerned. The aim of herd management ought to be to supply the most natural life possible, so as to reduce to a minimum the evils incidental to confinement within fences. This, with watchfulness and a due but not excessive liberality in feeding, will ensure health and long life to the ponies, and, to their owners, a reasonable profit and an unreasonable degree of pleasure. CHAPTER V. The Pony at Work. It has already been explained that the Shetland pony is now little used for work in his native Islands, having been displaced by larger ponies and horses as the development of roads has substituted driving for riding, and carts for the creels and pack-saddles which are now found only in the remoter districts. [Illustration: A TEAM OF MARES.] The progressive disuse, however, of the pony, as a work animal in Shetland, has been accompanied by a much greater increase in its use elsewhere. This has specially been the case in the employment of ponies in coal-pits, which grew to its height during the very period in which the use of roads became general in Shetland, and in which, therefore, but for some new demand for it, the pony might in all likelihood have come near to extinction. It was in the middle of last century that ponies were first used in coal-pits in the north of England,[48] horse ponies over three years old being imported at the price of £4, 10s. each. Their employment increased rapidly, until, in the late sixties and early seventies, the demand became so great that the earlier price was more than quadrupled; the supply of ponies was practically exhausted; and the Islands were all but depleted of good stallions; since these only are used in the pits so as to obviate the inconvenience of working stallions and mares together. The number now employed is very large, and shows little sign, so far, of reduction through the increased use of machinery, which tends to displace rather the larger horses used in the more spacious main roads than the Shetland ponies which can find their way in the lower-roofed passages of the pit. There is usually an active demand for thick, strong colts ready for work, which is not now permitted at less than four years of age. The Shetland pony—and particularly the pony of the “Londonderry” type—is admirably adapted for pit work. In structure he is exactly what is required, massive, muscular, and heavy, and yet able to walk comfortably in a passage not four feet high. His wise and placid disposition is no less a recommendation in an animal which is to work in cramped situations and in surroundings that might overstrain more excitable nerves than his. The Shetland pony learns easily to accept and adapt himself to new conditions; he travels with composure by sea or land; and the introduction of motor-cars into Shetland has been carried out with much less disturbance to the minds of the equine