In the matter of stock as well as in pure agriculture the Virginians were backward.  They showed to best advantage in the matter of horses.  Virginia gentlemen were fond of horses, and some owned fine animals and cared for them carefully.  A Randolph of Tuckahoe is said to have had a favorite dapple-gray named “Shakespeare” for whom he built a special stable with a sort of recess next the stall in which the groom slept.  Generally speaking, however, even among the aristocracy the horses were not so good nor so well cared for as in the next century.

Among the small farmers and poorer people the horses were apt to be scrubs, often mere bags of bones.  A scientific English agriculturist named Parkinson, who came over in 1798, tells us that the American horses generally “leap well; they are accustomed to leap from the time of foaling; as it is not at all uncommon, if the mare foal in the night, for some part of the family to ride the mare, with the foal following her, from eighteen to twenty miles next day, it not being customary to walk much.  I think that is the cause of the American horse having a sort of amble:  the foal from its weak state, goes pacing after the dam, and retains that motion all its life.  The same is the case with respect to leaping:  there being in many places no gates, the snake or worm-fence (which is one rail laid on the end of another) is taken down to let the mare pass through, and the foal follow:  but, as it is usual to leave two or three rails untaken down, which the mare leaps over, the foal, unwilling to be left behind, follows her; so that, by the time it is one week old, it has learned to leap three feet high; and progressively, as it grows older, it leaps higher, till at a year old, it will leap its own height.”

Sheep raising was not attempted to any great extent, partly because of the ravages of wolves and dogs and partly because the sheep is a perverse animal that often seems to prefer dying to keeping alive and requires skilled care to be made profitable.  The breeds were various and often were degenerated.  Travelers saw Holland or rat-tailed sheep, West Indian sheep with scant wool and much resembling goats, also a few Spanish sheep, but none would have won encomiums from a scientific English breeder.  The merino had not yet been introduced.  Good breeds of sheep were difficult to obtain, for both the English and Spanish governments forbade the exportation of such animals and they could be obtained only by smuggling them out.

In 1792 Arthur Young expressed astonishment when told that wolves and dogs were a serious impediment to sheep raising in America, yet this was undoubtedly the case.  The rich had their foxhounds, while every poor white and many negroes had from one to half a dozen curs—­all of which canines were likely to enjoy the sport of sheep killing.  Mr. Richard Peters, a well informed farmer of Pennsylvania, said that wherever the country was much broken wolves