Rural Economy in New England 339 



are freer from disease; suffer less from labouring on rough grounds; 

 and perform the labour better; and, when by age or accident they 

 become unfit for labour, they are converted into beef. The only 

 advantage of employing horses instead of oxen, is derived from 

 their speed. "^ 



The use of horses for travel and light transportation increased 

 rapidly with the introduction of wagons and the building of turn- 

 pike roads in the first decade of the new century, the oxen being 

 still retained for the heavier tasks of ploughing and of hauling crops, 

 stone and timber.^ In fact, as Livingston points out, the typical 

 horse of New England, the Narragansett, was much too high spirited 

 and lightly built for farm work.^ The horses, which were largely 

 raised either by the farmer himself or in the vicinity,^ had suffered 

 the same degenerating tendency as the cattle. Dickinson wrote: 

 ''Our horses are mostly of an inferior kind. Little attention has 

 been paid to them, and it is believed that they have rather declined 

 within fifteen or twenty years. When one casts his eye upon the 

 saddle horses of Virginia, or upon the draft horses of Pennsylvania, 

 he must be strongly impressed with the great improvement of which 

 our comparatively diminutive breed of horses is susceptible."^ 



Swine were kept on every farm, furnishing the salt-pork which 

 was a staple article of diet. They required but little attention; 

 in the fall they were ringed through the nose as a precaution against 

 rooting, and turned out into the stubble fields, as gleaners after the 

 harvest. In the winter they were fed on anything which happened 

 to be superfluous, hay, chestnuts, apples, potatoes, dairy and kitchen 



^ Statistical Account of New Haven, p. 22. See also American Museum, II. 

 85; VIII. 24-25. Tudor believed thoroughly in the superior efficiency of oxen. 

 He wrote: "An advantage to the farmer, individually, and a very important 

 benefit in its general results, is owing to the use of oxen, instead of horses, in 

 almost all agricultural labour." Letters on the Eastern States, p. 241. 



2 Horses and oxen had in earlier years often been used together as the follow- 

 ing quotation shows: "Our teams used for transportation and the several branches 

 of husbandry have been generally composed of oxen and horses together and our 

 vehicles for carriage have been carts and sleds, but withui a few years past waggons 

 drawn by horses have greatly multiplied and the cart harrow and plow are more 

 frequently drawn by oxen alone." Goodrich, Statistical Account of Ridgefield, 

 p. 8. 



' American Agriculture, p. 336. 



< Breeding horses and mules for the West India market had become an industry 

 of some importance in a few towns. Advertisements of stallions and Spanish 

 jacks at stud were frequent in the newspapers in Worcester and Windham counties. 



^ Geographical and Statistical View, pp. 11-12. 



