on mountains and islands; and this apparently is due to want of nutritious
or varied food. Every one knows how small and rugged the ponies are on the
Northern islands and on the mountains of Europe. Corsica and Sardinia have
their native ponies; and there were (2/19. 'Transact. Maryland Academy'
volume 1 part 1 page 28.), or still are, on some islands on the coast of
Virginia, ponies like those of the Shetland Islands, which are believed to
have originated through exposure to unfavourable conditions. The Puno
ponies, which inhabit the lofty regions of the Cordillera, are, as I hear
from Mr. D. Forbes, strange little creatures, very unlike their Spanish
progenitors. Further south, in the Falkland Islands, the offspring of the
horses imported in 1764 have already so much deteriorated in size (2/20.
Mr. Mackinnon 'The Falkland Islands' page 25. The average height of the
Falkland horses is said to be 14 hands 2 inches. See also my 'Journal of
Researches.') and strength that they are unfitted for catching wild cattle
with the lasso; so that fresh horses have to be brought for this purpose
from La Plata at a great expense. The reduced size of the horses bred on
both southern and northern islands, and on several mountain-chains, can
hardly have been caused by the cold, as a similar reduction has occurred on
the Virginian and Mediterranean islands. The horse can withstand intense
cold, for wild troops live on the plains of Siberia under lat. 56 deg,
(2/21. Pallas 'Act. Acad. St. Petersburgh' 1777 part 2 page 265. With
respect to the tarpans scraping away the snow see Col. Hamilton Smith in
'Nat. Lib.' volume 12 page 165.) and aboriginally the horses must have
inhabited countries annually covered with snow, for he long retains the
instinct of scraping it away to get at the herbage beneath. The wild
tarpans in the East have this instinct; and so it is, as I am informed by
Admiral Sulivan, with the horses recently and formerly introduced into the
Falkland Islands from La Plata, some of which have run wild; this latter
fact is remarkable, as the progenitors of these horses could not have
followed this instinct during many generations in La Plata. On the other