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, “‘ it 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 Wiliam 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 
Seeretary von Tienhoven, of the Dutch West India Company, indicates 
that at that date horses were being obtained from New Eneland 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 Enelish who have plenty of them.’’ There is appended also a 
