898 Deane Phillips 



the last-named case the court stated specifically as its reason for the 

 ' reduction that horses had for some time been worth much less than the 

 amount previously fixed by law. During this period of falling prices, 

 the number of persons in the country had steadily increased, roads were 

 being established, and new agricultural lands had been opened up — all 

 of which would result in an increased demand for horses. It appears, 

 therefore, that the increase in their numbers must have more than kept 

 pace with the development of the country, and that the decrease in 

 prices was due to the abundance of the supply rather than to any 

 decreased need for their services. 



There is much other evidence to indicate that by the middle of the 

 seventeenth century horses had become very abundant. In 1647 those 

 running wild in Massachusetts Bay were so numerous and were doing 

 so much damage as to call for legislative interference (57), while 

 Maverick, writing a little more than ten years later, says, 'Mt is a 



wonder to see the great herds of cattle and the great number 



of horses besides the many sent to Barbadoes and the other Carribee 

 islands " (58). The same condition is attested by John Winthrop the 

 younger, writing from Connecticut in 1660 (59), and by the report of 

 the Commissioners to New England presented to' the Board of Trade 

 in London in 1665 (60). By 1675, according to AVilliam Harris, who 

 had been sent out by the Board of Trade, the country had so many 

 horses '^ that men know not what to do with them " (61). 



A still further indication of the plentiful supply of horses in New 

 England is the fact that by this time these colonies had begun as a 

 source of supply for other colonies. In 1642 Massachusetts Bay was 

 being called upon to furnish a shipment of horses to Lord Baltimore's 

 colony in Maryland (62), and in the report to the Board of Trade in 

 1665, already mentioned, horses are named as one of the exports of 

 Massachusetts to Barbados and Virginia. A letter written in 1650 by 

 Secretary von Tienhoven, of the Dutch West India Company, indicates 

 that at that date horses were being obtained from New England by 

 the Dutch on the Hudson River (63). The letter in question advises pro- 

 spective settlers in the New Netherlands to take no horses with them 

 to the new land, because " they can be got at reasonable expense from 

 the English who have plenty of them." There is appended also a 



