possessing any thing like the beauty of those in Britain. — Their bark is runkled [i.e. wrinkled], dry, and weather— beaten, like that of a tree several years dead (a defect which is probably caused by the severe frost in winter); nor do their branches beautifully expand into that luxuriant covering of foliage so common at home, and, from their great height, they are no sooner broke into with clearances, than the wind is overturning some of them by the roots, breaking others by the middle, and rendering them an object still more unpleasant and revolting.

Although the number of ‘wind-throws’ had been exacerbated by human intervention in the island’s forest, the deficiency (in Johnstone’s eyes) in the shape of the trees, was due to the fact that, because they had grown up in old-growth forest they branched at a great height at the top of tall straight trunks, in contrast to the shapely and aesthetically pleasing branching of British trees that had grown as ’standard’ trees in coppice woodland, or as scattered trees in the ’deer parks’

and ’parkland’ around some of the great estates”.

The aesthetic appreciation of the forests per se — When it came to the aesthetic appreciation of the forest as a whole, it is Walter Johnstone again who casts a critical eye:

I may observe, that the woods in an old cultivated country are highly ornamented as well as useful; but here they are the reverse; for although they are very needful for several purposes, they are not at all attractive in their appearance. One cause of this is, their being so extensive that the eye can discern little else but wood or water every where; another reason is, that the woods on the borders of almost every settlement have been destroyed less or more by fire;

this renders them a very unpleasant object indeed. 8‘“

Despite this major general criticism of the appearance of the island’s forests, Johnstone was not wholly negative. In fact, he singled out the island's beech forests for special praise, saying that "of all the different kinds of wood upon the Island, the beech, when growing separately by

84° A ‘deer park’ in England was an area of land that from

medieval times had been managed as ‘wood-pasture‘ in which deer were grazed (usually fallow deer (Dama dama) introduced from the continent of Europe), and confined to the park by a paling or fence. The trees in it were generally scattered. Many deer parks later evolved into the ‘Iandscape parks' enclosing the great aristocratic houses. and such areas also had scattered trees. (See Rackham (1986, 2003) and Thomas (1983) (pp. 201-03)).

3‘" Johnstone 1822. See Johnstone’s more extended description of such burnt woods on pages 60-61 of this report. This negative aesthetic effect of the ubiquitous forest fires was also commented on by Lawson (1851), as we have seen (p. 61),

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itself, is the most beautiful”. It is evident that for Johnstone the ’beauty’ of the beech forest was especially owing to the fact that it was easy and pleasant to walk through: ”the ground it occupies is the freest from underwood, or any thing to obstruct one’s way, while in summer it furnishes the most delightfully refreshing shade over head of any I have met with".

A similar appreciation of the aesthetic qualities of the hardwood forests of the island is evident in Robert Gray's (1793) description of the forest on a ridge running inland from what is now Tyne Valley as a ”lovely admixture of lofty pine, black birch [i.e. yellow birch], beech, maple etc.”, and because elsewhere in the same letter he uses the word ’beautiful’ to describe the same forest, his valuation would seem to be purely an aesthetic one, rather than in terms of the timber that the forest contained. 8‘2

Appreciation of the forest per se is also evident in two extended passages of Samuel Hill describing the natural forest in the Cascumpec area in 1839 at different seasons:

In the beginning of June, the summer bursts forth; and the natural forest, presenting to the eye every variety of vegetation, and filling the air with the fragrant perfumes of the native herbs of the island, gives abundant evidence of the fertility of the soil;

About the middle of September, the forests, as they change from the rich green of summer to the thousand autumnal tints which the variety of their kinds exhibit, present scenery unsurpassed in beauty or in hopes of future plenty which they inspire, by any thing to be met

with in the old or new world. 843

The autumn change in the colour of the leaves also called upon the descriptive abilities of several other

3‘2 It is evident that the aesthetic appreciation of Robert Gray for

the hardwood forest (like that of Johnstone for the beech), was influenced by the ease of travel through it, especially when compared with the discomfort connected with travelling in other forest-types. As Gray related in his account, after travelling along the ‘beautiful‘ hardwood ridge of Lot 13, he recounted the great difficulty in trying to get through a “spruce fir swamp", followed by an “ash swamp", all the time being attacked by mosquitoes. (Johnstone (1822. 1823) described the similar problem of trying to get through the “impenetrable” coastal spruce “thicket", while in the woodland just inland of this coastal strip there was also ”unpleasant walking" on account of the many fallen trees.)

8‘3 Hill 1839. Neither description is entirely free of the utilitarian

outlook — in the reference to the ‘fertility of the soil“ and of the “hopes of future plenty".