Sand Hills — there were enough trees on the site in fact to provide firewood for three men stranded on the dune for a month or more.

THE FOREST AS A NATURAL HABITAT: ASPECTS OF FOREST ECOLOGY

Though none of the recorders gives an extended description of the forest as a natural habitat, a number of different ecological and habitat features emerge from the documents.

The open nature of old-growth hardwood forests - Many recorders observed that there was little 'underwood’ — in effect no shrub layer — in the hardwood forests of the island, and perhaps in some of the other forest-types as well. Thomas Desbrisay (1772) in a newspaper advertisement in lreland that was intended to attract settlers to his island properties, noted that there was ”little or no brush or underwood”, thus making the soil ”easy of cultivation”. Since he was only to arrive on the island in 1775, someone else must have provided him with this information. From his own experience, Thomas Curtis (1775) observed that in the New London area the hardwood lands were ”pretty clear at bottom” and thus "safer traveling” in than were the mixed and coniferous areas. John Stewart (1806) also said there was "very little underwood” in the island’s forests in general, which meant that travelling through the woods was "not difficult, even where there [were] no roads”. Bishop Plessis (1812) described the forests as "c/aires” [i.e. open], while John Hill (1819), in discussing land-clearing operations, also noted that there was ”scarce any underwood". Then, Walter Johnstone (1822) noted that it was ”often the case” that there was "little or no underwood”, and he later added that "of all the different kinds of wood upon the Island”, where the beech ”grew separately by itself”, the ground was ”the freest from underwood, or any thing to obstruct one’s way” _ which in the light of Stewart’s comment that beech covered ”better than half of the Island" must have been applicable to a lot of the island's forested area.

However, that not all areas were equally clear is evident from Samuel Hill (1839), living at Cascumpec, who noted that, though "sometimes the forests are open, and the trees so far apart, that you may ride through the country without roads”, this, he said, was not the general rule — (presumably at least in the west): ”but [the forests] are too generally mixed with trees of a

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smaller growth", as well as with ”wind-falls" and "underwood to permit the traveller to make a straight course, even on foot”. Also, Lord Selkirk (1805), in describing land-clearing operations, makes a reference to ”brush—wood, with which the forests generally abound”.

We may thus conclude that many of the island’s forests, especially the old-growth hardwood forests, were open and clear at the bottom. This made travelling in the woods relatively easy, and, it was claimed, it also made the forest clearance procedures easier, as well as the practice of sowing the first crop among the tree stumps.“9

The spacing of the trees — We are given no direct quantitative information on the density of the trees in the pre—settlement forest, though we have a few interesting general statements, and from these it is apparent that there was considerable variation in tree density between the different forest—types. In the old-growth hardwood forests it seems that the trees were well spaced from each other. Stewart (1806) in his forest-soil classification, noted that on what he called the ”best land” (which comprised hardwood forest with some conifers) ”the trees will stand at a distance"; while John Hill (1819), in describing the practice of ploughing and harrowing among the stumps after tree clearance, said that this was facilitated by the fact that the trees grew "some distance asunder”. Twenty years later, this is given further support by his son Samuel's comment, just noted, that ”sometimes the forests are open and the trees so far apart that you made ride through the country without roadsmo. Statements such as these three would suggest that the large old trees of the old-growth hardwood forests had not only suppressed the shrub layer (as we have noted above) but also any near competitors.

However, that it was not so in other forest-types is evident from an additional comment of Samuel Hill's that travelling in the forests could be difficult because "they are generally too much mixed with trees of a smaller growth”. We also have the earlier statement of an anonymous letter-writer to an Irish newspaper (Anon. 1773), that "the woods are as thick as ever the trees can stand together" — though I doubt that we should take this as a literal description, since it could simply be the

“9 This last point is implied by [Hill] (1819) — see the next section

on tree spacing.

12° Hill 1839.