Assembly adopted, from time to time, regulations that were likely to increase the number of these animals, which, at this period, were valued at six shillings apiece.[1] One of the most effective was to prohibit their exportation,[2] and this was followed by offers of large inducements for the destruction of wolves. In 1666, rewards were paid in York at one levy for the heads of seventeen. In 1668, the same county paid twenty-two hundred pounds of tobacco for eleven heads. In 1672, twelve hundred pounds were expended. In the levy for November, 1675, in Middlesex County, allowance was made for the payment of rewards for four wolves’ heads, and in one of the levies for 1681, there was a similar allowance for five heads. In 1656, the November levy in Lancaster County provided rewards for twenty-one. By an Act of Assembly passed in 1669, the Indian tribes were required to deliver annually one hundred and forty-five wolves’ heads.[3] The destructiveness of these animals was not confined to sheep; in many cases the planters had reason to lament the fact that young calves owned by them, which were running in the woods, had been devoured by wolves.[4]
Abundant as hogs were at this time, it is common to find among the debts enumerated in the inventories, specialties for so many pounds of pork.[5] An attempt was made by many of the planters to mark their swine, but in the appraisement of their estates the number in their possession was frequently returned as unknown.
- ↑ Records of Lower Norfolk County, original vol. 1675-1686, f. p. 116.
- ↑ Hening’s Statutes, vol. I, p. 463; vol. II, p. 128.
- ↑ Ibid., vol. II, p. 275.
- ↑ Records of York County, vol. 1657-1662, pp. 230, 342.
- ↑ See, for one among many instances, Records of York County, vol. 1664-1672, p. 469, Va. State Library.
