predators, the fox and the marten. The black bear, an omnivore, would have had more diverse tastes, feeding on plant materials (especially berries) but also on whatever animal matter it could get hold of — Denys (1672), in his natural history of Acadia, says that bears also scavenged along the shore feeding on lobsters and other fish cast up by the sea.41

An interesting point for consideration is the effect of beech-mast years (i.e. years of high synchronised seed production by the island’s beech trees) on the abundance of mammals and birds, not only on the herbivores but in turn on their predators, via the food—chain. Franquet (1751) and La Roque (1752) recorded that years of high beech mast production were considered by the local inhabitants to be the cause of the vole outbreaks. And we may add to this Roma's (1750) comment that in plague years ’all of the animals’ fed on the vole — he mentions specifically the fox and the marten as well as among the birds, the raven, the chat-huant (likely the great horned owl), and ’all the birds of prey'. The only evidence that we have from the island that this might have led to an increase in the abundance of these predators is Franquet’s (1751) statement that the fox, marten, mink and lynx were more abundant in some years than in others“ though a confounding factor here is the so-called ’long cycle' (or 'nine to ten year cycle’) in the numbers of the snowshoe hare and its predators (especially the lynx) that has long been recorded throughout its North American range”. We may also note that Denys, in a chapter based on his observations elsewhere in Acadia, says that martens were more abundant every two or three years.44

The presence of the caribou on the island, along with its predator, the wolf, is one of the more interesting pieces of information to emerge from the records of the period.45 It appears that neither

“ Denys 1672 (reprinted in Ganong 1908, pp. 383, 575).

‘2 Since he spent only seventeen days on the island Franquet‘s statement must have been based on information supplied to him by the local inhabitants.

‘3 It was first documented in the fur returns of the Hudson‘s Bay Company in the early nineteenth century and has been studied scientifically in the last fifty years, e.g. Brand, Keith & Fischer 1976, Keith & Windberg 1978.

“ Denys 1672 (in Ganong 1908, pp. 387, 577).

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species was abundant: Denys (1672) says that there were only a few caribou on the island, their scarcity he thought being due to hunting by the Indians. This is somewhat inconsistent with La Ronde's (1721) statement fifty years later that the Indians found them difficult to kill, at least in winter, which he says is the reason they did not winter on the island, the implication being that there was little else for them to eat in winter — which would indeed be so, given the absence of the beaver and the moose, which we know from Denys (1672) to be two of their traditional winter food animals.46 We thus have here a clear instance of the natural fauna (both presences and absences) having important effects on the indigenous human population.

We may wonder where on the island, and on what vegetation, the caribOu fed. Lichen forest, their preferred habitat", although present on the island48 is not likely to have been all that common, though in the absence of other ungulate herbivores, especially the moose, they may have expanded into other niches such as coniferous forest, as well as perhaps feeding on salt-marshes and dune grassland in winter.

The last French period record that mentions the caribou is that of Roma (1750) who had left the island in 1746. The failure of either Franquet (1751) or Pichon (1760) to mention them might have led us to believe they had been extirpated by the early 17505 were it not that in 1765 Captain Samuel Holland was to record their continuing presence, though with the added comment that

there were ’but very few’“.

As for the wolf, since there is no mention of their presence on the island after La Ronde's record of 1721, it is possible that they were extirpated much earlier than the caribou or, given the low numbers of caribou, it may be that they moved at some point across the ice to the mainland. That

‘5 This is a corrective to Lohr & Ballard‘s (1996) statement that the wolf never occurred on Prince Edward Island. ‘5 Denys 1672 (in Ganong 1909, pp. 595—597).

‘7 e.g. Anon. 1992

‘3 Some of the island's black spruce forests have an important lichen component (see Sobey 1995, pp. 92-94).

‘9 Holland, Captain Samuel. Letter of 8 October 1765 to Richard Cumberland Esq. (A hand-written transcript is in PEl PARO, Acc. 2324/8A.)