raspberries, currants, gooseberries, blueberries and cranberries are mentioned by many recorders, some of whom noted that they occurred in the forest‘”. Stewart (1806) in particular included an ecological comment on most of these berries: the strawberry, he said, was found in ”open spots in the forest” (as well as in other places); the raspberry was found ”in the greatest plenty wherever the forest [was] destroyed by fire, or the ‘26- the gooseberry was very u timber cut down , common in the borders of the forest”, and was "often found in the old French cleared lands” — by 1806 these were under secondary forest, as Stewart and others record elsewhere; the black currant was ”very common in low rich moist land”, presumably also forestedm; while the blueberry, although its habitat is not described, grew ”in great abundance in many districts”, and in some areas was ”in such plenty as to furnish the swine with their chief food for several weeks” — as will be noted later, pigs were allowed to range freely in the woods.128 Also receiving attention from some of the recorders were those forest plants that were viewed as having a medicinal or dietary application: among these were "29 ’sarsaparilla , l - I130 I ' - I131 132 ginseng , and malden hair . Wood sorrel , 125 Holland 1765 (October); [Clark] 1779; Patterson 1774; Shuttleworth 1793; [Cambridge] 1796?; [MacDonald] 1804; Stewart 1806; Anon. 1818; MacGregor 1828; Hill 1839; Bagster 1861; Sutherland 1861; Bain 1890. ”6 [MacDonald] (1804) also noted that the raspberry was "fond of starting up in parts where the wood had been cut down but the soil little cultivated afterwards". See also the section on forest succession (p. 23), where raspberries are mentioned as one of the colonisers after forest fire and tree-cutting. ‘27 [MacDonald] (1804) noted that currant and gooseberry bushes occurred “in a few places" in the wooded swamps and ‘intervals' (i.e. intervales], though he added that, unlike the gooseberry bushes found in the woods near the sea, which had fruit "larger than a pea", they had no fruit. ‘28 We have already noted how the term ‘blueberry barren' seems to have been a recognised land descriptive; occurring especially in the records of the Land Commission (1875). ‘29 Holland 1765 (October); Walsh 1803; Stewart 1806; MacGregor 1828; Hill 1839; Bagster 1861; Sutherland 1861; Bain 1890, Sarsaparilla is a common name for Aralia nudicaulis, though I note that Erskine (1960) applies the name to Aralia hispida. 13° Walsh 1803 — though his description fits the lndian cucumber (Medea/a virginiana) rather than the ginseng Panax trifo/ius; Stewart 1806 (however, I note that Erskine (1960) considers Stewart's “Ginseng panax tn'folinum“ to be Aralia nudicaulis); MacGregor 1828; Sutherland 1861. ‘3‘ Holland 1765 (October); Walsh 1803; Stewart 1806; MacGregor 1828. It is not clear what these writers meant by the 22 I133 4 ’golden wire and pigeon berries13 also receive mention, the latter presumably getting its name from the passenger pigeons that must have fed on it. Then after 1850, some of the ‘scientific’ recorders included lengthy lists of many of the island’s herbaceous plants, a number of which occurred in the forest“. One of the most interesting comments of an ecological nature on a component of the forest ground flora is John Stewart's (1806) observation that the presence in hardwood forest of "dwarf yew, or as it is commonly called, ground spruce" (i.e. Canada yew, Taxus canadensis), was an indicator of the "best land” for clearance for agriculture. Other recorders who noted the presence of the Canada yew were Selkirk (1803) at Pinette, who observed that ”these woods are overspread with underwood — briars, raspberries and ground spruce — which seems a kind of yew”; and David Stewart (1831) who, while in the Bedeque area, noted ”a sort of dwarf yew crawling all over the ground”. Forest succession — An "extraordinary”136 ecological phenomenon that attracted the particular attention of Johnstone (1822) and MacGregor (1828), was the fact that where the original forest had been destroyed, whether by cutting or fire, trees of a different type grew up in their place — or as Johnstone put it: ”where the timber is cut, it will spring up in a new wood, but always of a different kind from what was upon it before”.137 Neither Johnstone nor MacGregor were able to offer an explanation for this, and the ‘maiden hair', though two ofthem (Holland and Stewart) say that it was used in making a tea. In the British Isles there are two different ferns that go under the name ‘maidenhair‘: Asp/enium tn'chomanes, the maidenhair spleenwort and Adiantum capillus- veneris, the maidenhair fern, and both were believed to have medicinal or dietary uses (Oxford 1989), However; they or any conspecifics are never likely to have occurred on Prince Edward Island (eg. see Erskine 1960, p. 48). ‘32 Walsh 1803 (presumably Oxalis monfana). ‘33 Walsh 1803. This must be the goldthread, Coptis groenlandica. 13‘ Stewart 1806 (i.e. Cornus canadensis). ‘35 Bagster 1861; Sutherland 1861; Bain 1890; McSwain 8. Bain 1891. l have not included their lists in the extracts. ‘35 MacGregor (1828) uses this word in his comment. 137 Also, Gesner (1846) ([p. 18]), in a passage not extracted, refers to the same phenomenon; when he said “when [the trees of the stately forest and the indigenous plants] are cut down. they are succeeded by other varieties."