Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/402

 provision was violated, those brought in were seized and devoted to the public use. The law forbidding their exportation had been revoked during the previous year. In 1662, a tax had been laid upon these animals in order to supply funds for the payment of the rewards offered for the destruction of wolves, but as this tax was felt more heavily in the frontier counties, where the wolves were greatest in number and the horses were fewest, its repeal was considered to be advisable. The owners of horses were thought to be more or less easy in fortune, and were, therefore, required to confine them between July 20th and October 20th, as it was looked upon to be too much of a hardship for a poor man to be compelled to erect high fences to keep out those which were suffered to run at large. It is difficult to see what advantage could accrue to the small planters from such a regulation as this as long as hogs were allowed to have the free range of the woods, unless horses roaming as they chose were peculiarly disposed to encroach upon the cultivated fields, not finding their food in the forests with the same facility as other kinds of live stock.

As late as 1672, there were but a few sheep in the Colony in proportion to its area. Many planters in York were the owners of small flocks, being encouraged to devote some attention to sheep husbandry by the fact that the wolves had been very much diminished in number. In 1666, there were enumerated as a part of the Crouch estate, six ewes, five lambs, and two wethers. The Seabrell inventory, which bears the same date, included eight sheep. In 1667, Colonel Joseph Croshaw of York owned forty