recorders (like many persons today), even though they might have known that there were three spruce species on the island, were less confidant in identifying the trees in particular situations.94

The genus is listed in island records under the names ’spruce’, ’spruce-fir' and ‘spruce pine’ (Table 1-3).95 For the three species, the modern nomenclature of ‘black’, ’red’ and ’white’ seems to have become standardized among island recorders very early, Cambridge in 1796 being the first to use all three names.96 However, that all is not straight—forward is apparent from Stewart (1806), who gives the name ‘red spruce’ to what appears from his description to be the whites”, and from Walsh (1803) who gives ’black’ and ’red' as alternative names for the same species“.

9" I also suspect that the phrase “spruce and ﬁr” as used by some recorders (Gesner 1846, Anon. 1877, Burke 1904, Mollison 1905, and even on occasion, Johnstone 1822), rather than indicating precise botanical identiﬁcation is a deliberately used collective phrase that saves the writer from having to determine which of the two genera were present.

95 Where 'spruce-fir' (with or without a hyphen) is used as a tree name in island records (as in Gray 1793, Selkirk 1805, MacGregor 1828, Martin 1837 and Seymour 1840) it refers to the spruce (i.e. Picea species) — as also does the 'spruce pine' of Walsh (1803). We can be certain of this on account of the etymology of the tree name ‘spruce' and the history of its usage: ‘Spruce' or ‘Sprucia‘ is an archaic English name for Prussia, and the name was applied to the European spruce (Picea abies, now called the Norway spruce in the British lsles) because the English were first familiar with the tree in the form of wood imported from the Baltic. The wood, as well as the tree, was initially called ‘Spruce fir' [i.e. “Prussian ﬁr’], which was later shortened to ‘spruce‘. This origin is analogous to, and perhaps inﬂuenced by, the French use of the name prusse for the genus (see Sobey 2002, p. 121, footnote 12). The first known English usage of the name ‘spruce’ for the tree is in 1670 (Oxford 1989, XVl: 365). I note also that the botanical taxonomists also considered the spruces to be a kind of fir until the early nineteenth century, when the genus Picea was split off from Abies (Elwes & Henry 1910).

96 Earlier, Patterson (1774) had listed the 'black and white spruce'. Curiously, Perley (1847) says that white spruce was also called "single spruce" on Prince Edward Island (as well as in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) — though he may be mistaken for the island, as his is the only record that I have come across for the use of the name.

97 Stewart (1806) describes each of his three species of spruce using the names black, white and red. All is well until in the description of his red spruce he says that it "sometimes grows on old cleared land long out of cultivation [where] it forms very ornamental groves, its figure being regularly conical and feathered to the ground" — which is a perfect description of old-field white spruce!

98 Whether by accident or not, Walsh is in agreement with Perley’s (1847) view that the red spruce was a variety of the black. However four decades later Macoun (1894) could say that, though the red spruce had indeed "been a puzzle to most botanists and may or may not be a good species", the form occurring on the island was “easily separated" from both the white and black spruce, and he went on to comment on the size and shape of the cones and their position on the stem as diagnostic features.

164

General distribution and abundance — The fact that ’spruce’, or particular species of it, occurs in thirty of the thirty-six tree lists that included the conifers99 (Table 1-3) (and seems to have been included in four additional lists under other names‘oo), suggests that the genus was very common on the island. It also has by far the highest report rate of all of the trees in the tree tally (Table 1-1). in fact, seven of the list-makers include it in their lists as a ’principal’ or ’prevailing’ species‘o‘, while three other comments from the early colonial period indicate even more clearly its importance: Samuel Holland in 1765 said that "spruce of many different kinds is the universal produce of the whole lsland”1°2; an anonymous letter writer (Anon. 1771) said spruce trees were ”plenty on every part of the Island"; while Edward Walsh (1803) stated that the spruces were not only the most numerous of all the conifers ("the Pine Tribe”, as he calls them), but also of all the tree species on the island. A century later in 1904, Crosskill, surveying the depredations of fire and ”the woodsman’s axe” on the island's forests, noted that in the woods that remained the ”commonest” trees were the fir and spruce‘”, while Watson (post 1904) noted that each of the three species was ”common throughout the Island".

With regard to the abundance of particular spruce species we have only one comment: Perley (1847) said that red spruce — which he considered a variety of the black spruce — was ”found most frequently in Prince Edward Island” — presumably in comparison with New Brunswick (the main subject of his report) — and he attributed this frequency to the influence of the ”deep rich soil upon the quality of the wood”.

99 The thirty-seventh, that of [Bain] (1882), listed only the broad-

leaved trees.

'00 The spruce genus is subsumed under the "various kinds of ﬁr" in the list of Anon. (1808), and likely also under the blanket listing of “pine of various kinds" by [Clark] (1779). Also the ‘ﬁr trees‘ that Curtis (1775) recorded on the coastal sand-dunes of Lot 11 could only have been white spruce, while Bagster's (1861) "Pinus Alba White Pine" appears to be white spruce (see the footnote in Tables 1-2 and 1-3).

‘0‘ It is a ‘principal‘ or 'prevailing‘ tree of Holland (1765: March), Patterson (1770), [Hill] (1819), Martin (1837), Murray (1839), and Monro (1855), and one of the ‘chief‘ trees of Anon. (1877), while MacGregor (1832) included it among those trees that he said were "growing in abundance" on the island.

“’2 Holland (1765): October. It should be noted that he explicitly

includes the balsam r'ir as one of the species covered by this statement.

103

Crosskill 1904.