within the bounds of such new farms, would have been especially vulnerable to harvest by the farmers themselves, either for their own building and other needs, or for sale to local mills and timber merchants. Later on, when the lumbermen began to turn more to spruce (as also to tamarack for railway sleepers and ship-timber), the small areas of the island’s black spruce boreal forest (of which tamarack was also an element), mostly on land unsuitable for agriculture in the east and west of the province, would have borne the brunt of the assault, and it would seem that by the 1870s most of these forests had been ’lumbered over’.659 Even so, a small-scale lumbering industry seems to have persisted even into the twentieth century in some of these parts, as Morrison’s study of the forest—related industries of Lot 11, one of the last and least densely settled of the townships, demonstrates.660 We may conclude that this selecting of the better and larger trees of the preferred species, the modern term for which is ’high—grading’, did not result in the destruction of the forest, for the forest per se was not destroyed by such a method of harvesting — as it was in the process of clearing for farmland. Clear-cutting in the modern sense of the word was likely to have seldom occurred, except for the rare occurrence of single species stands of uniform age (as might have been so for some of the 'groves’ of pine, as well as of spruce). Thus, the effect of timber harvesting was that it led to a gradual degradation in the forest, as first the larger white pine trees were removed, especially those large enough to yield the minimum sizes for making ton timber for export, to be followed later by the harvesting of the smaller pine trees, as well as eventually other species. Over a period of some fifty or sixty years (1800 to 1860) such harvesting would have brought about a great change to the age structure of the forest (as the older and larger trees were removed), as well as in 659 Much of the evidence submitted to the Land Commission of 1875 suggests that by that time, even in the later settled areas of western Prince County there were only a few stands of timber remaining: the witnesses talk mostly in terms of spruce and cedar (the pine was long gone), most of which seems to have been harvested within the memory of many of the farmers giving testimony to the Commission. 55° Morrison (1984) (Vol. 1, pp. 151—57). Morrison also highlights the effect of the building of the Prince Edward Island Railway on the remaining forests of Lot 11, both in terms of making accessible previously isolated stands of forest in the south-western part of the township, and of creating a demand for wood for the building and maintenance of the railway, especially in the form of sleepers and fence posts. 98 its species make-up, with pine especially, being greatly reduced and even eliminated from many areas of the hardwood forest”. However, it is important to stress that the effect of the timber harvest on the forest cannot be considered in isolation: it was but one of several overlapping human impacts on the forest in the nineteenth century, including as we have seen, the annual collection of firewood and the frequent forest fires. Wood shortages, and the importing of wood to the island — We might not have expected to find people experiencing wood shortages on the island as far back as the eighteenth century. However, it is interesting that the island’s first governor, Walter Patterson, writing from Charlottetown within eight weeks of his arrival in August 1770, to the minister responsible for the colonies in London, observed that ”the woods on this part of the Island are of very little use except for firing; and a great part of them not even good for that". Of course, the general area of the capital had been occupied for some fifty years by the French, who must have taken the best of the wood near the shores. Then, in 1784 a letter from Captain John MacDonald, the proprietor of Lot 36, then living in London, to his sister managing his estate at Tracadie on the island, containing detailed instructions on the steps she was to follow in order to have a house built, indicates that at the local level, wood shortages could occur very early on, and also that finished wood products such as shingles and clapboard were at that time difficult to obtain on the island.662 In fact, MacDonald first recommends that a smaller house than he would wish be built, since it will "not require extraordinary quantities of timber or materials, nor any large timber, and therefore it will be easier executed". Even with a smaller house, however, one of the principal problems that he foresaw was procuring the necessary wood. It would seem that there was no suitable timber on his own township (Lot 36), presumably — at least on the northern part — due to the effects of the French period fires 66‘ By 1881, in the first Canadian census containing figures from Prince Edward Island, pine (mostly white) contributed only 38 tons (1,524 cubic feet), 0.20% of the island's wood harvest, and 5,260 logs (2.7% of the total). (Ref: Census of Canada of 1881 (Vol. III), pp. 252-53 — printed by MacLean & Roger & 60., Ottawa, 1883]. In 1990 white pine contributed only 0.094% to the crown closure of all forest stands on the island (as determined from aerial photographs) (see Sobey 8. Glen 1999, p. 18). 662 MacDonald 1784.