32 1M{()CEEDING.S: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
At various times llic govcrnirient authorities concerned with Sable 
Island have tried to improve the breed of the ponies. "A few un- 
successful experiments' have been tried, and the tame horses being let 
loose, have been killed by the wild ones." Howe recommends, in 
conclusion, the introduction of blooded stallions. This, too, has been 
tried, without results. To one familiar with the history of the Sable 
Island ponies, this failure is not surprising, for the newly introduced 
horses are set loose and allowed to breed freely with the wild ponies. 
No artificial selection is exercised, and as these new horses and their 
offspring exist under the same living conditions that wrought the 
horses from New England into Sable Island ponies, they, or rather 
their offspring, become Sable Island ponies, and no " improvement in 
the breed" is realized. 
Early Botanical Records. 
The botanical history of Sable Island is not very extensive but it 
begins with a record of extraordinary interest. 
Johannes de Laet in the third, which is a Latin edition of his work 
mentions^ in his account of Sable Island, or Insula de Sable as he calls 
it, "fruticeta multa, paucissimae arbores, humus fere nuda aut lev- 
iter herbida;." When translated this is; "there are many thickets of 
shrubs, very few trees, the soil is almost bare or lightly clothed with 
vegetation." To the present state of the island these statements are 
all applicable, the sand dunes are bare, or lightly clothed with vege- 
tation, there are thickets of shrubs formed mostly of Rosa virginiana 
Mill., but also of Myrica carolinensis Mill., Ilex verticillaia (L.) Gray, 
Viburnum cassinoides L., and Rubus arcuans Fernald & St. John, 
but at present there are no native trees of any sort. This clause 
which is quoted and translated from de Laet does not occur in the first 
and second editions of his work, which are in Dutch. It is added to 
the end of the paragraph devoted to Sable Island in the third or Lat- 
in edition, and it appears with similar wording in the fourth or French 
edition. Johannes de Laet was born in Antwerp in 1585 and died in 
Amsterdam in 1649. He had direct connections w^ith the new world, 
being a "patroon" of Rensselaerswyck (now Albany, N. Y.) where 
his daughter and son-in-law had settled, and he was also a director of 
the Dutch West India Company. This official connection would 
^ Howe, Joseph: Append, to Journ. of House of Assembly Prov. N. S. 
162 (1851). 
^ Laet, Johannes de: Novus Orbis seu Descript. Indiae Occ. ed. 3, 37 (1633). 
