120,000 900,000 800,000 100,000 700,000 80,000 600,000 c 8 8 500,000 5 (U g 60,000 _<1_) 8 400,000 g '1 < 40,000 300,000 200,000 20,000 100,000 0 0 1766 1796 1826 1856 1886 1916 1946 + population _ —o— _ arable land FIGURE 4. The population size and the amount of arable land recorded as cleared of forest on Prince

Edward Island between 1765 and 1941. (The data is from the Holland survey of 1765,

and the official censuses of 1768, 1798, 1805, 1827, 1833, 1841, 1848, 1855 — and from 1861 onwards, in the first year of each decade.)

of forest destroyed.233 Up to 1800 the amount of forest destroyed was small, but thereafter the rate of destruction began to accelerate exponentially until about 1850. Thereafter, although clearance was still high from the 18605 into the 18803 the rate was beginning to slow down, notably so in the 18905. As a result the acreage of cleared land on the island reached its peak in the census of 1911. Since the human population had already reached its highest point in the census of 188123“,

233 l think that we can take both ‘arable' (the word used up to

1871) and ‘improved‘ as meaning land that had been cleared of forest. The data used to plot the graph of the acreage of cleared land comes from the tables assembled by William Glen (see footnote 200), and for the population change, from Clark (1959) (pp. 60, 83, 121, 237). By the way, the data exists to allow the plotting of a separate graph of this type for each of the 67 townships.

23‘ Clark (1959) (p, 83) concludes that by the 18505 the island had effectively "filled up“ in terms of external immigration A very detailed spatial picture of the population distribution close to this time is provided by the Lake map of 1863 (actually completed in 1861), which shows the location of every household on the island,

40

and the number of farms in the census of 1891235, the further increase in the amount of cleared land up to 1911 was due to continuing forest clearance on each farm.236 Then from the 1930s a very significant change occurred: for the first time since the beginning of European settlement on Prince Edward Island the total amount of cleared land began to fall, indicating that woodland was making a come-back, but that is a different story and is beyond the time-limits of this study.237

naming the head of each household (Lake 1863). Also very useful for showing the population distribution is the somewhat later ‘Meacham's Atlas’ (Allen 1880) which must have been compiled in the late 1870s.

”5 Clark 1959, p. 134.

235 Using data from Clark (1959) and Glen (see footnote 200), the average of the amount of cleared land per farm unit works out at the following: 1841: 22.3 acres; 1848: 24.3; 1855: 34.3; 1861: 32.6; 1881: 43.8; 1891: 49.4; 1911: 54.4.

237 The census figures for the island’s population that have been used to construct Figure 4 are cited by Clark (1959) (pp. 60, 66,