at least some of the many fallen trees recorded in old-growth forest (as was described earlier), and especially those reported in the forest areas near the coast by Johnstone (1822), must have been due to catastrophic wind events, and not to natural tree death from old-age and senescence.185

Wood clogging the rivers — Gamaliel Smethurst (1774), who had visited the island in the 1760s, recorded that there was a ”vast quantity of old wood at the bottoms of the rivers” making it difficult to ”draw the nets”, and he considered that this would hinder the development of a salmon fishery on the island. This is the only comment on a phenomenon that we would otherwise not have been aware of. In the 17605 there was only a small population of a few hundred people on the island, and in the absence of people to keep the rivers clear for navigation reasons, and of presumably insufficient power in the currents and tides, it seems that trees and branches falling into the rivers as a result of natural causes could become entangled and accumulate in the rivers.

The fauna of the forest — An analysis of the French period records had indicated that the island's mammalian fauna was a boreal one (i.e. belonging to the northern coniferous forests of North America), similar to that of the adjacent mainland, except for the significant absence of three key boreal species: the moose, the porcupine and the beaver.186 The analysis of the much more copious records of the British period, which is contained in Appendix 2 of this report, has not led to any major revision of this picture.

Like some of the French period writers, several British period recorders considered that the vole outbreaks that periodically afflicted the island, were caused by mild winters, but others attributed them to fluctuations in the production of beech mast — which, if so, would be a clear example of the tree composition of the island’s forest exerting a significant effect on the mammalian fauna. In

"’5 By the way, the only reference that l have come across to tree

damage due to ice-storms on the island is that of Stewart (1806) (pp. 103-04, not extracted) who said that between January and March a “freezing rain, or as it is commonly called, a silver thaw" sometimes occurred, when the trees became “so incrusted with ice. that many of the smaller branches break with its weight". Elsewhere such an event has been known to cause crown branch breakage and shedding as well as tree fall (see eg Peterken 1996, pp. 106-07), but there is no report of such in the island literature. l also note that Johnstone (1823) said that on one occasion as he was travelling through the woods, he could hear the trees “cracking with the strength of the frost" (he also referred to such cracking in his 1822 journal Johnstone (1822) (p. 135, not extracted». This was presumably internal cracking in the wood without any visible external damage. A. L. Adams (1873) (p. 127) describes in some detail a similar cracking of trees due to cold temperatures in his travels in New Brunswick.

186

See Appendix 2 in Sobey (2002).

33

fact British period records indicate that the beech tree on the island served as an important base for the forest’s food chains, its nut, or mast as it is called, providing food for the principal small mammals and game birds of the forest, especially the three species of squirrels and chipmunk, the ruffed grouse, and the small forest rodents. However, it seems unlikely that the reverse occurred, namely that any of the mammals (or birds, for that matter) would have had a significant effect, either general or localized, on the composition and structure of the forest. Such an effect is all the more unlikely, given the absence of the moose, porcupine and beaver, three of the more damaging of the tree-browzing animals.

During the British and post-Confederation periods some six members of the island’s terrestrial mammalian fauna became extinct: the wolf and the caribou (both probably during the French period), the lynx, the marten, the otter and the bear, the marten and the otter seemingly on account of unregulated trapping, the lynx and the bear, in part because of bounties instituted by the island’s government with the aim of their extinction, though the destruction of their forest habitat due to agricultural clearance, as well as forest fire, will have played a role in the decline of all of these species. Also, the passenger pigeon, a bird seemingly of some importance as a game bird in the early pioneer period, became extinct, though this would seem to have been largely due to human activities elsewhere on the North American continent.

The forest as a source of insect pests — In the early pioneer period many recorders commented on the problem of biting flies, and though a few grouped them under headings such as 'flies’, ’small flies', stinging flies, or 'different kinds of flies’m, most went on to specify the mosquito as the principal culprit‘a", while some also named another insect which they called the ’sand fly’ or the ’black fly’189. All of these flies, and especially

187

‘Flies’: Anon. 1836; ‘small flies': M’Robert 1776; ‘stinging flies': Curtis 1775; ‘different kinds offlies': Patterson 1773.

158

Holland 1764; Curtis 1775; M’Robert 1776; Cambridge 1793; Gray 1793 (extracted only in part); Stewart 1806; Anon. 1808; Johnstone 1822 (p. 134, not extracted); MacGregor 1828; Hill 1839.

"’9 Stewart (1806). MacGregor (1828) and Hill (1839) used the name ‘sand fly'. The ‘sand-fly‘ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford 1989) as a “small fly or midge, especially one belonging to the genus Simulium" — this is the genus to which the present-day ‘black fly' belongs. The only recorders to use the name 'black fly’ are Stewart (1806) and Hill (1839); Stewart using it as an alternative name for the sand fly.