However, he considered that the ’finest oak wood’ [le plus beau bois de chéne]68 was found at Malpeck (clearly the region around the bay, rather than the site of the French settlement of Malpeck, which was along the shore between the present Green Park and Gillis Point). However, the fact that oak and pine were the only trees that he mentioned in his 1732 report suggests an eye coloured by traditional naval and commercial attitudes to these species as sources of ship timber.

Roma (1734) listed oak as one of the trees found near his habitation at Saint-Pierre, and La Roque (1752) had it in his list of the species in the area around the havre de Macpec [Malpeque Bay] — he also specifically records it among the hardwoods on the Isle a Monsieur Court/n [Courtin Island], though he adds that there was little of it.

Conclusion — The high frequency of oak in the tree lists of Tables 1-2 and 1-3 is likely to be unrepresentative of its actual abundance, and we should give due note to the type of comments made about it. On the whole it seems to have been viewed as uncommon or even rare on the island, though possibly more visible in the Malpeque Bay area and at Tracadie Bay.

THE BIRCHES (Betula species) [French names : bouleau, merisier]

Identification — lle Saint-Jean had three native birches of tree size, two of which display the characteristic white bark (Betu/a papyrifera, white birch and B. popu/ifo/ia, grey birch). The third species (B. alleghaniensis, yellow birch) is distinctly different: although younger trees have a yellowish birch-like bark, the bark of older trees is similar to that of other broad-leaved trees such as the maples. However, its leaves and catkins are recognisably birch-like. With two white-barked species widely occurring in France (B. pendu/a and B. pubescens)“, the early French recorders were likely to have been already familiar with the genus. Thus, if there were any problem in identification, it would not have been in distinguishing yellow birch from the white-barked birches — rather, it would have been in recognising yellow birch as a birch

63 “la plus beau bois de chéne" appears to refer to the quality of the wood (as lumber), rather than to a wood as an area of trees.

69 Jalas & Suominen (1976)

136

species. On the plus side, yellow birch should have been easily distinguished from the other broad-leaved trees OCCurring on the island.

Nomenclature — The French name for birch is bouleau, and this name appears early in the North American records, in most cases probably referring to the white—barked birches — and probably mostly the paper birch.7o However, from the earliest days of French exploration and colonisation in North America an entirely different name was used for the yellow birch — merisier71 — a name brought over from France, where, however, it was a name for the wild cherry (Prunus .avium).72 The reason why this name was used for a birch species is not at all obvious but it may be that the tree was not initially recognised as a birch.73 However its origin be explained, merisier has ever since been the standard common name for the yellow birch in both Canadian and Acadian French (Table 1-1).74

The tree lists — Merisier occms at least twice as frequently as bouleau in both the tree lists (Table 1-2) and in the total tallies (Table 1-3): it is listed in six of the eight tree lists — only Cartier (1534) and Denys (1672) (both with limited experience of the island) omit it. Among the broad-leaved species in the total tally, it ranks third (after beech and oak). Bou/eau by contrast occurs in only three of the eight tree lists (Table 1-2): it is in the more comprehensive lists of Roma (1750) and La Roque (1752), and also in Denys (1672), where it may well be intended to include birches in general.

Specific areas - The only geographically pin- pointable listings for either bouleau or merisier are by La Roque (1752): he recorded merisier as one

7° Ganong 1909, p. 206; Massignon 1962, p. 177. 7‘ Massignon (1962) (p. 177) cites Champlain (1630) as the earliest written record.

72 Massignon 1962, p. 178. This was the reason for Harvey‘s (1926) (p. 44) mis-translation of Gotteville’s (1720) merisier as ‘wild cherry’, an error which has thence been disseminated to other authors, eg. Erskine (1960).

73 One early writer (Boucher in 1664), cited by Massignon (1962) (p. 177), says that the name was given because its bark resembles that of the merisiels (i.e. wild cherries) of France.

7‘ Denys (1672) in his Histoire Natural/e (reprinted in Ganong (1908) (p. 378), unusually among early recorders, did not use the name men'sier for the yellow birch. Instead he called it mignogon, which as Ganong points out, must come from the Mi‘kmaq word for the yellow birch (nimnogun). That Denys was clearly referring to the yellow birch is evident from the fact that the tree he described under that name was ‘une espece de bouleau‘ [a kind of birch] and its wood had properties and uses that fit the yellow birch exactly.