coast of Lot 15 were considered ”indifferently good”, while on the north shore from Lot 20 to Lot 23 the woods are initially described as ”indifferent" though improving towards the east. In the north-east the forest descriptions from Tracadie Bay to East Point were confounded by the effects of the great forest fires that had occurred in the region during the French period. Overall, however, we might conclude from Holland’s survey that the major part of the island’s undisturbed forest was considered to be of a very good quality.

The size of the trees — We may presume that in the mature old-growth climax forest that covered much of the island at the beginning of the British period the trees would have been at their maximum size in relation to the regional climate. In fact Stewart (1806) considered that the principal species on the island (”the pines, black birch [i.e. yellow birch], beech and maple") were generally larger than their equivalents on the adjacent continent.” In the literature there is a great deal of qualitative description of the sizes of many of the island’s tree species, and a few quantitative estimates. This data has been assembled for each tree species in Appendix 1, and I shall comment only on the maximum sizes here.

Stewart (1806) considered the white pine to be the largest of the island’s trees, followed by the hemlock.33 He said that pines, ”three, four and five feet in diameter” were found“, and he makes passing reference to pines of from 80 and 90 feet in height to greater than 100 feet.35 He did not give an estimate for the size of the hemlock, but Johnstone (1822) recorded hemlock diameters of

32 I note however that Selkirk (1805) said the timber on the island was “seldom so heavy as in the more southern parts of America". By the time of his writing this in 1805, he had travelled in the northern parts of the United States on route to his settlement site on Lake St. Clair in Upper Canada.

33 In fact Hill (1839) said that the hemlock grew “to a size nearly equal to that of the pine”.

3‘ A later retrospective report of the old-growth trees on Lot 11 stated that some of the pines had even been of six feet diameter ([Lawson] 1877-1878).

35 Stewart mentions bald eagle‘s nests occurring “eighty or ninety feet from the ground" in dead pine trees, and elsewhere he refers to a large pine tree from which a ‘main mast' had been made which we can calculate to have been about 34% yards (1031/2 feet) in length. This was the length of the mast — the tree's full living height must have been greater than this. The later retrospective report of the old-growth trees on Lot 11 also recalls pines of 100 feet in height ([Lawson) 1877-1878) — though ‘100 feet' must really only be a conveniently large guess.

10

BY: feet and heights of 80 feet. For the broad- Ieaved species it was the size of the three shade- tolerant trees of the climax hardwood forest - beech, maple (presumably sugar maple) and yellow birch — that caught the attention of the early recorders. Stewart (1806) said that yellow birch was "the largest of the island’s deciduous trees", while Hill (1839) said it was ”much larger than the beech". From other recorders we have diameters of three, four and six feet for yellow birch”, while for beech, MacGregor (1828) said it was ”sometimes three feet in diameter”, though along a survey line in Lot 28 beech trees of up to six feet in diameter had been recorded in 177337. As for the maples, the largest diameter that we are given is three feet”. Thus, recognizing that the quantitative tree sizes that were recorded are a bit patchy and are not necessarily indicative of the maximum sizes, we may conclude that trees of three feet in diameter and greater were not uncommon for all three of the shade-tolerant hardwood species.

However, to counteract the impression that the entire forest consisted of such large trees we should bear in mind Walsh’s (1803) comments, cited above, that “the trees [of the island] in general are slender, few exceeding a foot and diameter” and Plessis’ (1812) comment that the island’s trees were ”not remarkable for either their height or size", being ”generally inferior to those of Canada”, though at the same time allowing for the fact that they may not have seen a full range of the island's trees. There were also natural habitats, such as the ’barrens’, where the trees were very small in size”, as well as areas of forest that were in recovery from the effects of the French-period clearances and fires, and so would also have had small trees40 .

The recognition of forest-types — In the historical literature that I have examined, there is no single satisfactory explicit approach to the classification of the forest-types of the island, and it must be recognized that such a classification was not the objective of any of the recorders. We can however come to some understanding of the types of forest that were perceived to occur at the time

3“ MacGregor 1828; Bain 1890.

37 See footnote 319 of Appendix 1.

35 MacGregor 1828.

39 There is further information on p. 14.

40

There is further information on pp. 54-55.