trees. This may reflect differences between the different spruce species and the habitats they occmred in, as well as between older trees of the climax forest and younger successional trees. On the one hand, John Stewart (1806) said that black spruce ”often grows to a large tree”, as did Francis Bain (1890), referring to the spruces in general.130 David Stewart (1831) also included the ’common spruce’131 among those trees in Lot 47 whose size he said was ’large’, while Macoun (1894) concluded that the three spruce species all produced finer specimens on Prince Edward Island than "[were] to be seen elsewhere in the Dominion”. The only quantitative measure given on the sizes of spruce is a retrospective one: Lawson (1877-1878) said that the spruces found in the Brackley Point area at the time of settlement were "commonly 3 feet in diameter and 100 feet high", and he also refers to the "great huge spruces" that had once occurred in Lot 11.

On the other hand, in the boreal forest-types with poor and waterlogged soils, the trees (undoubtedly black spruce) were usually reported as small in both diameter and height.132 There are also records indicating that the spruces could be small in other habitats: Walsh (1803) is the most categorical, saying that the trees ”nowhere arrive to a large growth” — he perhaps was reporting what he saw in the area of Charlottetown. Selkirk (1803) said spruce was "frequently of a moderate size", making it useful for the logs used in log houses.133 He may have had in mind trees similar to those he saw on the site of a fire near Wood lslands: "scarcely a tree diameter the size of a man’s thigh”. Trees of similar size (ten to twelve inches in diameter) were reported by MacGregor (1828) on the site of the French fires in the north- east of the island‘3". Mollison (1905) also recorded small spruce trees growing on a fire site

‘30 The minimum size set in 1817 for exportable spruce ‘ton timber'

by the colony’s House of Assembly (1773-1849) — ten inches square - could only have been obtained from a tree of at least 14 inches diameter (after the bark had been removed). By 1849 this had been raised to 12 inches square (i.e. about 17 inches diameter without the bark). However, such legislative stipulations do not necessarily imply that there were many trees of these sizes on the

island, as I suspect such laws may be a reflection of British North American standards,

‘3' He meant Picea species as opposed to ‘hemlock spruce'.

‘32 'Dwarf’ and 'stunted' are two of the adjectives used

footnote 159 for further descriptions.

— see

‘33 Elsewhere Selkirk said that the logs used for log houses were

“about eight inches in diameter” (Selkirk 1805). 134 MacGregor increased the size to “twelve to fifteen inches" in his 1832 book (MacGregor 1832).

166

in the west of the province as being ten to twenty feet in height.

Habitat and community relationships — The records indicate that the spruces occurred in both climax and successional forest-types. There are three types of climax forest containing spruce in the early records: the woods on coastal cliffs and banks; upland hardwood forest (where spruce appears to have been a minority component); and boreal forest communities associated with wet and/or poor soils. Spruce was also reported as an important tree in the successional stages in the tree colonization of abandoned farmland, as well as after tree-cutting and after forest fire. Unfortunately most recorders do not name the species of spruce and we are thus left to work it out from the context. We do however have one attempt to differentiate between the three species in terms of their soil requirements: Watson (post 1904) said black spruce was associated with ”low lying and wet lands”, the white with ”dry land” and the red with soils in between in moisture content.

Coastal spruce — Spruce formed a single species ’thicket’ along the shores of the island wherever sandstone cliffs or banks occurred.135 Although the species is never named in any of the records, it can only have been white spruce Picea g/auca.

We have explicit evidence of the occurrence of

such coastal spruce at widely scattered sites‘“,

and a vivid description of it has been left to us by Johnstone (1822):

‘35 Johnstone (1822) states this explicitly: initially he says that what he called spruce “thickets" occurred “almost everywhere on the southern side of the island round the shore", but he went on to generalize the “thicket" for all the shores of the island: it occurred "round the greater part of the island [wherever there was] a steep bank of various heights, from four to more than twenty feet".

136 Coastal spruce (“small” or “indifferent") is reported by Holland (1765): (October) for Lots 1, 2, 3, 28 and 30 (the lack of such reports for any other of the lots is simply due to the general absence of tree species names in the forest descriptions of Holland's report). Also the “impenetrable Rampert of a thick kind of Brush wood” reported between North Cape and West Point by Anon. (1762) must have been white spruce, as was Johnstone’s (1823) “thicket" at what seems to be Abells Cape near Fortune. Selkirk (1803) also recorded such coastal spruce at Point Prim, as well as on the coast in the vicinity of Wood Islands. (However, it seems that the “poor stunted trees" that Selkirk noted on the “shores everywhere" at Pinette were not coastal white spruce, but rather an edaphic climax associated with poor soils: at one place where ”stunted spruce" occurred along the river he found the soil to be “a white sand on top, but red below".) Finally. William McNeil), in evidence to the Land Commission (1875) said that the “front" of Lot 24 had once been “covered with a growth of scrubby spruce".