La Ronde records that a wolf pelt had been sent to France from the island, not only underscores the veracity of his record but also indicates that they were vulnerable to the European presence on the island, though it is not impossible that it was the Mi'kmaq who were responsible for the kill.

Finally, Franquet’s comment that the black variant of the red fox was ‘less rare’ on the island than on the mainland is of some interest, especially considering that it was the presence of such colour phases in the island’s fox population that stimulated the development of the silver fox industry some 150 years later.

The vole irruptions — The most detailed commentary on any of the island’s mammals is Roma’s (1750) three page analysis of the vole ’plagues' that caused the destruction of the crops of the settlers (see the Addendum, pp. 157-59). What he wrote is almost a mini-ecological treatise that includes a description of their appearance, behaviour, and ecological relationships, as well as comments on population factors such as breeding output, dispersal, and mortality. This information, as noted above, has led me to conclude that the species concerned was the red-backed vole (Cleithrionmys gapp en) .

Various vole species in northern regions have long been known to undergo marked fluctuations in population size with peaks every two to three or more years, the so-called ‘short cycle' in population studies — the causes of which are not fully understood.50 However, the outbreaks or 'irruptions’ (as they are called by population ecologists) in the vole population of lle Saint-Jean appear not to have been either so frequent or so regular.51 The cause of these outbreaks, leading as they did to the almost total loss of the year’s crop, with subsequent hardship for the human population, occupied the minds of the island’s administrators and settlers. Roma attributed their cause to the occurrence of at least two winters in succession with heavy snow cover, without a thaw, that gave the voles protection from their predators and allowed them to get ample food from their food-stores under the snow. He considered such weather factors to be unusual -

5° e.g. see Elton 1942.

51 According to Harvey (1926) (p. 207) vole outbreaks occurred in 1724, 1728, 1738 and 1749 — though i note that Franquet (1751) (p. 132) records the last outbreak as 1750 and not 1749.

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he says they had occurred only once in his fourteen years on the island — which must have been the winter of 1737-1738. In contrast, Franquet (1751) and La Roque (1752) (as well as his shadow Pichon (1760)), relaying the opinion of the resident population, associated the irruptions with a year of high beech-mast production — La Roque more precisely stated that the ’plagues’ oc0urred in the year after the high mast production. (We should note that beech, both in Europe and North America, has long been known to have such cycles in its seed output“) From hindsight it is impossible to determine which, if either, of these explanations is correct, though the long gaps between the irruptions on the island implies that either of the attributed causal factors (whether a mast year or successive winters of heavy snow) must have occurred rather infrequently.

Even though they differ as to the cause of the irruptions it is interesting that both schools of thought came to the same conclusion as to its solution. Roma, presumably knowing that nothing could be done to alter the winter snowcover, recommended two pre-emptive lines of action: the first was to destroy the nests and shelters of the voles in the woods adjacent to the cultivated fields; the other was to clear completely large stretches of forest in the areas around the settlements. This second approach is in agreement with the more passive opinion of the local population, as reported by Franquet, that when the forests would be cleared away (including the beech woods), the problem would lessen. And of course that is what eventually happened: after the French period the irruptions became fewer and farther between, with the last significant one occurring in 1813.53

Effects of the fauna on the forests — Though the types of forest on the island would have had significant effects on the composition of the forest fauna, we need also to ask the reverse i.e. whether the fauna of the island exerted any significant effects, either of a localised nature or more general, on the forest. The absence from the island of three of the more significant tree—feeding herbivores of the boreal forest (the moose, porcupine and beaver) would have meant that the

52 e.g. Piovesan and Adams 2001.

53 MacQuarrie 1987, p. 16.