for clearance and cultivation‘“. They were considered either too wet‘“, too sandy146 or lacking in nutrients‘“. Tree associates reported for spruce on at least some of these lands were ”small white birch and scrubby pines”“‘8; "var” [i.e. balsam fir]”9; ”juniper” [i.e. larch]‘5°; ”cedarm‘; ”fir and larch”‘52; ”fir and white birch”‘53; "fir and ash”‘5"; and ”other species of fir” [i.e. conifersl‘“. It is likely that these spruce-dominated areas comprised several different types of forest community. One in particular was a wet forest- type: ten recorders associate spruce with what they call ’swamps’ or ’swampy’ land, either at a specific site‘56 or in general for the island as a whole‘57. Six of these identify the species 1“ Spruce is a principal tree indicator of what Stewart (1806) called the island's "worst land"; Selkirk (1803) noted that spruce generally grew on "poor land"; while elsewhere, more categorically, he said that ”Black Spruce alone [i.e. on its own] shows land perfectly useless, a mere sand"; Johnstone (1822) took spruce as a sign of the land that was “worst in quality of any on the Island”, whereas MacGregor (1828) limited his comment to calling such land "less fertile". Finally, Hill (1839) said that “scrubby spruces" were an indicator in some districts of “very sandy soils hardly at present worth cultivating". while a refrain running through the evidence given to the Land Commission (1875) for Lots 9 and 16 is that in those areas spruce was associated with poor land (for Lot 9, see the evidence of Robert Holton, Felix McKinnon, John McKaller and Alexander Anderson; for Lot 16; see that of John Ramsay, and Alexander Anderson). 145 Johnstone 1822. “6 Selkirk 1803; Stewart 1806; Johnstone 1822; Hill 1839; Land Commission (1860): evidence of T. H. Haviland. 147 MacGregor 1828. “8 Stewart 1806. ”9 Johnstone 1822; Land Commission 1875: evidence of Samuel Ramsay of Lot 13. ‘50 Land Commission 1860: evidence of T. H. Haviland; Land Commission 1875: evidence of Donald McFarlane of Lot 28, and Archibald Carmichael of Lot 36. 15‘ Land Commission 1875: evidence of John McKaller for Lot 9; and of James Warburton for Lot 10. ‘52 MacGregor 1828. 153 Land Commission 1875: evidence of Donald McDonald for Lot 36. 15" Land Commission 1875: evidence of the surveyor; Alexander Anderson. for Lot 9. ‘55 Hill 1839. 156 Gray 1793; Gesner 1846; Land Commission 1860: evidence of Martin Foley of Lot 3; Land Commission 1875: evidence of Robert Holton of Lot 9. 157 Stewart 1806; Johnstone 1822; Proprietors 1837; Hill 1839; MacGregor 1828; Bain 1890. 169 occurring on such swamps as black spruce‘“, and at least on some of these swamps the trees are described as small or ’stunted’159. The wetness of the soil is also stressed, the cause of it seemingly due to the presence of an impervious clay layer‘so. Johnstone (1822) has left us a vivid description of what may be the more extreme form of these ’swamps’: Some of these swamps are growing with black spruce, so rank as not to be much more than a foot apart, about the thickness of a pitchfork handle, and from fifteen to twenty feet high, with the branches almost all dead, but a few at their top. But where the water has not a proper descent from these swamps, a quagmire is sometimes formed. A specific example of such a site is the ”spruce-fir swamp" in the centre of Lot 13 that Robert Gray struggled across in 1793: we fell in with an extensive Swamp covered with a kind of Spruce fir stunted in its growth, generally not more than 5 or 6 feet high and its branches proceeding horizontally from the ground to the top hard rugged and so interwoven as to render the whole to appearance utterly impervious. we were often obliged to lift ourselves up by the help of the boughs and step from the top of one bush to another, there being no opening below large enough to admit a Rabbit. After two hours struggling we had advanced about a mile. 161 In addition to this wet black spruce forest-type it seems that small stunted black spruces were the dominant trees on another type of tree community one in which the soil was not wet. This distinction is most clearly expressed by Hill (1839) who recognized a land-type with ”very sandy” soil, covered by ”scrubby spruces and other species of firs of stinted162 growth”— which he distinguished from his ”swampy lands” in part "over—run with spruces and thick bushes". The terms ”barren” and ”spruce barren” as used by several witnesses to the Land Commission (1875) may also refer to ‘55 Stewart 1806; Johnstone 1822; Proprietors 1837; Land Commission 1860: evidence of Martin Foley of Lot 3; Land Commission 1875: evidence of Robert Holton of Lot 9; Bain 1890. ‘59 Gray (1793) calls them “stunted", Stewart (1806) “small”, MacGregor (1828) “dwarf‘, while Johnstone (1822) says they had the “thickness of a pitchfork handle”. They were accordingly short in height: Johnstone (1822) says “fifteen to twenty feet"; Gray (1793) “5 or 6 feet". 16° Stewart (1806): "under some of the swamps [are] beds of strong white clay“; Johnstone (1822): “white sand upon the surface, and a red clay below"; Bain (1890): “heavy clay soils". ‘5‘ Gray 1793. ‘62 ‘Stinted' means ‘undersized’ (Oxford 1989).