. The Canadian field-naturalist. 1967 Mansfield: Mammals of Sable Island 47. Figure 6. A small herd of horses at Sable Island. mestic size which have in forty generations reverted almost to the size of their wild an- cestors. In contrast to this is Dr. Thomas Raddall's opinion {in lift.) that the small size of the horses reflects their origin from the small Norman or Biscayan horses, some of which may have been taken to the island or even shipwrecked there by one of the many French expeditions to North America before Le Mercier's time. The horses appeared larger than we had come to expect, and
. The Canadian field-naturalist. 1967 Mansfield: Mammals of Sable Island 47. Figure 6. A small herd of horses at Sable Island. mestic size which have in forty generations reverted almost to the size of their wild an- cestors. In contrast to this is Dr. Thomas Raddall's opinion {in lift.) that the small size of the horses reflects their origin from the small Norman or Biscayan horses, some of which may have been taken to the island or even shipwrecked there by one of the many French expeditions to North America before Le Mercier's time. The horses appeared larger than we had come to expect, and photographs of several of the wild ones taken near to one of us suggested an average adult height at the withers of about 55 inches (Figure 6). Cer- : tainly the two riding horses we saw were ' of this size. We also learned from past and . present residents of the island that new blood had been brought in from time to I time since the turn of the century. Dr. ' Raddall told us that in the early 1900's several stallions were brought to the island, >â and we also heard from one of the present observers from the meteorological station that "Colonel", a large riding stallion, had been brought to the island 30 years ago and , had been allowed to run wild for some I time several years ago. There seems little doubt that these recently introduced ani- mals have contributed much to the gene pool of the island stock though genotypic increases in size may well have been offset by phenotypic effects of the environment. A rough calculation shows that the area of consolidated dunes available for grazing is about 3,300 acres, or an average of 16 acres per horse. Considering the sparseness of the plants (Figure 7), this may represent mar- ginal feeding only. Such grazing might not allow maximal growth in size in spite of an occasional supply of baled \\2.\ provided by the Federal Government. Colours of the horses varied from Palo- mino through chestnut to almost black. Some foal
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