Although forest remnants survived in the form of woodlots, they underwent great changes due to the selective removal of partiCUlar tree species for firewood. Since beech was the preferred firewood, we may presume that wherever it was available, it would have been cut for fuel. We have already seen that beech forest was considered to be indicative of good land suitable for clearing, and we may thus presume that in many clearance operations, there would have been an abundance of this desirable fuelwood during the pioneer land-clearing stage. Then, after the active clearing on a farm had ended, beech would have continued to be selectively removed from the wood-lot at the back of the farm. However, because mature beech trees, when they are cut down, do not re-sprout from the stump”, the amount of beech in the woodlot would have continually declined, to be replaced by tree species more readily able to re-sprout from out stumps or to come in by seed.528 Thereafter, within a century, the woodlots would have become converted from the old growth climax trees of beech, sugar maple and yellow birch, all of which are poor sprouters529, to faster growing early successional species such as red maple and white birch.

HARVESTING TIMBER FOR USE AND EXPORT

In addition to firewood the forests provided an abundant source of many different kinds of timber and wood for use in construction and for materials

of all kinds. The wood produced by practically every tree species, whether softwood or hardwood, was useful for some purposes”, and

thus much of the island’s timber was harvested for use either on the farm and in the home, or for commercial sale and export.

527

Tubbs 8 Houston (1990) report that sprouting ability in beech declines once the tree reaches 10 cm diameter (d.b.h.), and that sprouts from stumps 25 to 38 cm in diameter are usually short lived and do not attain tree stature. Also root sprouts or suckers, another means of reproduction in beech, are only slightly stimulated by the removal ofthe stern.

52" Red maple is the most obvious, being a vigorous sprouter after either fire or cutting (Walters and Yawney 1990).

529 Sprouts produced on older and larger cut stumps of sugar maple do not survive well (Godman, Yawney & Tubbs, 1990, p. 83), while the sprouting from larger stems of yellow birch is also “very poor“ (Erdmann, 1990, p. 137).

53° For contemporary perceptions of the properties and uses of

each tree, in Appendix 1 see under each tree species the section titled ‘Properties and uses ',

80

The procedures used in the timber harvest — l have not come across any comprehensive single description of the physical procedures used on the

island to harvest and extract timber531 from the woods. However, if we add the passing comments of several writers to three brief

passages in John Hill's (1819) Information for Emigrants (he was the proprietor of four townships bordering Cascumpec Bay), we are able to re- construct in outline the procedures involved, and it is evident that the picture that we get does not differ in any significant point from the procedures practised elsewhere in British North America — except that on the island everything would have been on a much smaller and more localised scale.532

It was the practice, Hill said, for the ’inhabitants’ to go into the woods in winter to cut timber.533

53‘ The word ‘timber‘ is used by the recorders throughout the

historical period to refer to the wood in standing trees (as it is still used today in both North America and the British Isles), as well as to the wood in felled trees, whether left in the round as saw-logs, or squared to four sides with the broad axe. ‘Lumber‘, however, is a North American term, which, according to the OED (Oxford 1989), strictly speaking, refers to “timber sawn into rough planks or otherwise roughly prepared for the market”, and this seems to have been its only meaning when used in the early years, as for example, by [Cambridge] (1796?), Selkirk (1803) and Anon. (1818). However, the usage of the word ‘lumber' on the island expands and changes during the nineteenth century. The words ‘timber hewer‘ Chappel (1775-1818 [in 1809]) ‘timber-maker' (Johnstone 1822) and ‘timber-getter’ (Anon. 1826) which were sometimes used for the axeman felling the trees and hewing the logs are displaced in later years by the North American terms ‘lumberman‘ and ‘lumberer’, with the tree-felling activity now beginning to be called ‘lumbering’ rather than ‘timber-making‘. The first usage in this sense that l have come across among the island recorders is that of Samuel Hill (1839), who used the word ‘lumbering‘, but then felt necessary to define it for a British readership unfamiliar with the term, as “the telling and manufacturing of timbei”. Thereafter, the words ‘lumbering' and ‘lumberman' occur commonly (eg. they are used by Gesner (1846), Monro (1855), and in evidence to the Land Commissions of 1860 and 1875). In addition, many persons giving evidence to the Land Commission (1875) are now also using the word ‘lumber', in place of ‘timber‘, for the standing and felled wood, as, for example, in the evidence of J. Simpson of Lot 22: “The lumber was all taken off Lot 22 by the people of Lot 21” —- this usage for ‘standing timber' is cited by the Dictionary of Americanisms (Mathews 1951), but not by the Dictionary of Canadianisms (Avis 1967).

532 For extensive descriptions of the procedures involved in the timber harvest in the rest of British North America, see Lower (1973) (Chapter 16) for eastern Canada in general, and Wynn (1981) (Chapter 3) for New Brunswick.

5“ [Cambridge] (1796?), Stewart (1806), MacGregor (1828) Anon. (1826) and Anon. (1836) also note that winter was the time for cutting timber and extracting it from the woods. Another example: on 11 February 1809 (not extracted), Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) recorded “very hard very cold weather — much snow on the ground, so much that the timber hewers come home in general". As Wynn (1981) (p. 54) points out, trees were “better