Free-ranging native Dartmoor and Exmoor ponies have not only held strong cultural and environmental significance for thousands of years within their respective national parks, but their environmental benefits and naturally selected characteristics have also been acknowledged and harnessed for conservation grazing and rewilding programmes. Despite a wealth of literature regarding the welfare of sports, leisure and working horses, there is little information concerning the welfare of free-ranging and extensively grazing ponies. The present study compared the welfare of native Exmoor and Dartmoor ponies grazing on the moors in their respective national parks (n = 47) with those that have been translocated to other areas of the UK for use in conservation grazing and rewilding programmes (n = 29) using a specifically designed observational welfare assessment protocol for free-ranging ponies. The results showed a significant difference between common land and conservation grazing ponies in the scores for Body Condition Score, Water Quality and Availability, Environmental Hazards, Human Disturbance, Skin and Coat Condition and the Human Approach Test. Despite no evidence of significant welfare compromise being identified, this study emphasises the importance of year-round monitoring of welfare and the feasibility of the observational welfare protocol to be used by pony keepers and grazing managers in the future.

Yellow blades on joint surfaces in granite from Merrivale quarry, Dartmoor, Devon, are shown to be of a slightly aresenatian variety of phurcalite by X-ray powder diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, electron microprobe and thermal analyses and optical methods. The results from these techniques are tabulated, including assignments for infrared absorption bands. Comparison of X-ray powder diffraction, infrared spectroscopic and optical data with those obtained from samples of ‘nisaite’, an incompletely described mineral from Nisa, Portugal, indicates that the latter is also phurcalite.

Almandine garnets in the cordierite-bearing granite of Sweltor Quarry, Dartmoor, contain < 10 mol. % of the spessartine end-member, whilst those in the Lundy granite have c. 10 mol. % spessartine. Experimental work indicates that such compositions can grow in equilibrium with siliceous melts at depths of 18–25 km. This evidence, reaction rims, lack of marked zoning and comparison with garnets in other siliceous calc-alkaline siliceous rocks point to a genesis involving partial melting of the ‘local’ lower crust. A restite origin rather than direct crystallization from magma is favoured but the evidence is equivocal. The Dartmoor granite (Hercynian) is a typical peraluminous late- to post-tectonic S-type granite. The S-type character of the Lundy (Tertiary) granite is revealed by the occurrence of garnet and topaz together with biotite enriched in Rb, Cs and F, despite its close association with Tertiary basic magmatism in an anorogenic setting.