Once the data for each tree have been looked at individually, then I will examine the data for all of the trees collectively to see what they might tell us about the composition of the forest of the island as a whole.

THE CONIFERS

Interpreting the names used for conifer trees in the records of the French period for Prince Edward Island presents greater problems than it does for broad-leaved trees. This is because the French explorers and government officials themselves had special problems with both the identification and the naming of conifers. These can be attributed to three different factors:

(1) Unfamiliarity with conifer species — Because France lies within the zone of the European Deciduous Summer Forest, a broad-Ieaved forest— type (e.g. Eyre 1963), French people were not familiar with conifer trees, except in the forests along the Mediterranean, where several pine and juniper species occur, and in the alpine and upland parts of the country (the Alps, the Pyrenees, and parts of the Massif Centrale) where pine, fir, spruce and larch can be found to varying degrees. In fact, in the northern and western coastal regions of France, which was the area from which the early explorers and colonisers sailed to the New World, most people would have been more familiar with conifers in the form of wood imported from the Baltic than as living trees.

(2) Lack of a clear distinction in appearance between some conifer species — Compounding this problem of unfamiliarity is the fact that some of the conifer species, and even genera (the firs and spruces in particular) have a superficial similarity that presents problems in their recognition and differentiation. In fact the distinctions between many of the different genera that we recognise today were not known to people in the eighteenth century.5

5 The recognition and naming of conifer species was also a

problem for the botanical scientists of the period. The eighteenth century saw the birth of the modern system of plant taxonomy and nomenclature, culminating in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern plant taxonomy. In his Species P/antarum of 1753 Linnaeus placed in a single genus Pinus (the pines), all of the conifer genera that we now place in the pine family (Pinaceae) — relevant genera on Prince Edward Island are pine, spruce, fir, larch and hemlock. It was only in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that these various conifers came to be recognised as separate genera: Larix (the larches) — first separated from Pinus in a classification of 1763; Abies (the firs) — separated from Pinus in 1805; Picea (the spruces) — separated from Abies in 1827; Tsuga (the hemlocks) — separated from Abies

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(3) Limitations in conifer nomenclature — The above two factors meant that there were relatively few names in common use in standard French for conifer species — there were basically only two: pin and sap/n (i.e. pine and fir), plus also in some areas genévrier and cédre for junipers. Thus, when the early explorers and government officials encountered a range of unfamiliar conifers in the New World, they had either to make use of such names, or else use new names such as prusse, épinette, éricot and vio/on (Table 1-1). Some of these new names were making their first appearance in France at about the same time as their first use in the New World; others were only ever used in the New World, and even in specific parts of it, such as Acadia or Canada. We must also remember that the names used in France for the various conifers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were to a degree in a state of flux and may not necessarily have carried the same meaning as they do today.

BALSAM FIR (Abies balsamea) [French name : sapin]

THE SPRUCES (Picea species) [French names : prusse. e’pinette]

Identification — Since a single species each of spruce and of fir occurs in France, it is possible that some of the recorders may have had prior experience of these genera in Europe. However, neither species is widespread in France: the silver fir6 (Abies alba) is found only in the mountainous regions of the country, while the Norway spruce (Picea abies) is confined to the alpine border of south-eastern France.7 Thus spruce, and to a smaller extent fir, would not have been familiar as

growing trees to most people in eighteenth century France.

On Prince Edward Island, although the spruces (Picea spp.) and the fir (Abies balsamea) have a superficial similarity, they are readily distinguished from each other by anyone taking the time to examine them carefully. However, it is more

in 1855 (Elwes & Henry 1910). However, we must recognise that such scientific distinctions had little influence on the identification and naming of these trees by non-botanists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

6 The English common names for European tree species given in this paper are those used in the British Isles.

7 Jalas & Suominen 1973.