Horses

Forsyth recommends that Ewart consider publishing his report on Highland ponies through the Congested Districts Board. He assumes that his memo on the Antrim horse has reached Ewart.

Jessen asks Ewart to clarify his term 'the Norse horse' in his essay 'The Multiple Origins of Horses and Ponies' by confirming whether it means the Norwegian horse or the Norman horse.

Robertson writes that he had come to the same conclusion as Ewart that a slender horse played an important part in the ancestry of the English thoroughbred. He has compared various fossilised remains and concluded that although the shaft of the central portion of the large metacarpal bone is broad, the shapes of the first three phalanger are indicative of a slender race. He makes several observations on the significance of the metacarpals.

Robertson writes that he is enclosing a reply to Professor Wilson which he has sent to be printed in Nature (reply not present). He does not see why Wilson considers himself superior in questions relating to the pigmentary character of the Equidae, as Robertson has noticed many errors in Wilson's own work in his paper on coat colour now before the Royal Dublin Society.

Robertson comments on Ewart's paper on the development of the horse, particularly on the 'three-toed phase' in early embryonic life. He wonders whether there is any appreciable difference between the embryo of an Arab or thoroughbred mare and a Shire. He imagines that the three-toed stage would persist for two or three days or longer in the case of heavy, coarse breeds.

Leather requests that Ewart submit his article on the homozygous breeding and evolution of type connected with the attempts now being made by the Board of Agriculture concerning light horse breeding for national service.

Lort-Phillips provides comments on Ewart's treatise on 'eugenics and the breeding of light horses', which suggests ways in which funding from the Board of Agriculture should be used to approach such a scheme of breeding.

Lort-Phillips apologises for not answering Ewart's letter sooner but he has been travelling extensively trying to find what remains of the Welsh pack or cart horse in order to form a stud for the Government. He has been able to find some old stallions of the breed, of whose existence he was previously unaware, and believes that the breed, crossed with the thoroughbred, produces the best horses he has ever seen.

The year is not written on the letter.

Lort-Phillips writes that he found Ewart's paper to be interesting, although a lot of it was out of his reach. He comments on the theory that the horse passes through its various stages of evolution during gestation, and wonders if this is also applicable to humans.