Malpeque Baysm, and near St. Eleanorsm; in Lot

67: at Springfield, and at the nearby Elliott's Mi||2°7; in a remnant of "ancient forest" near North Wiltshirezog; near Vernon River Bridgezog; along the road between Charlottetown and Brackley Pointm; and along the northern border of Lot 122“. Also in evidence to the Land Commission of 1875 it was recorded on the ”vacant land” of Lot 10, and in the adjacent part of Lot 9; on a barren area of Lot 13; on a farm on the Tracadie estate of Lot 36, and in hardwood along the Hillsborough River at Marshfieldm. Finally, Walter Johnstone stated that fir occurred generally in the area of the French fire in the north-east of the islandm. Gesner (1846) also recorded what appears to have been post-glacial fossil fir trees in old peat below the tide level at Gallas Point (Lot 50), as well as in the peat layers of the Black Banks of Lot 11.214

Tree sizes — There are no useful records, either qualitative or quantitative, on the size of the island’s fir trees. All that we have is Macoun's (1894) statement that the island ”produced finer specimens of balsam [fir] (and the three spruce species) than are to be seen elsewhere in the Dominion” and Mollison’s (1905) description of the fir (and spruce) trees on a site that had been burned some sixty years before as ”ten to twenty feet in height".

Habitat and community relationships — There is some evidence that balsam fir could constitute an element, though probably only minor, of the upland hardwood forest: Francis Bain in 1873

205 Bird 1856.

2'” Bain 1868-1884 (in 1873);{Bain]1883.

205 [Bain] 1882,

209 [Lawson] 1877-1878.

210

Macoun 1894.

211

Mollison 1905. 212 Land Commision 1875: Lot 9 (evidence of the surveyor Alexander Anderson); Lot 10 (evidence of Joseph Mooreshed); Lot 13 (evidence of Samuel Ramsay); Lot 36 (evidence of Donald McDonald); near the Hillsborough River (evidence of Donald Ferguson).

213

Johnstone 1822. 2" I believe that the “many Fir trees" that Curtis (1775) recorded on an offshore sand spit that seems to have been the Conway Sand Hills, must have been white spruce rather than balsam fir. I also suspect that David Stewart’s (1831) statement that there were "few firs" in the forests of Lot 47 (i.e. the lot containing East Point), may either refer to conifers in general, or to pines, in line with the traditional meaning ofthe word ‘fir‘ in the British Isles (see footnote 8).

174

described fir as an element in an area of hardwood forest at Springfield, though he noted that it, like the other conifers in the area, occupied the hollows”; similarly, nine years later he described fir as ”filling the valley" along a stream in a remnant of ”ancient forest” near North Wiltshirem, and a year later as occurring, along with ”birch and maple", on the ”lofty forest-clad hills” at Elliotts Millsz”. In his later school—text, when he said that fir grew "on drier soils’ms, he may have been thinking of it as an element in such upland forests.219 And in evidence to the Land Commission of 1875 a farmer living beside the Hillsborough River at Marshfield stated that on a neighbouring farm there had been ”a little growth of fir, but very little” in a previously uncut wooded area consisting of ”a heavy growth of beech and black birch”22°.

However, fir also occurred in what appears to have been a climax forest-type on wetter soils: Bain (1890) noted that fir, along with ”spruces,

larches, poplars, birches and aspens”, characterized the ”cold soils of the swamps and barrens”, whose species he considered to

constitute what he called a ”sub-Arctic flora” - the term we might now use is ’boreal’. We seem to have a specific example of such vegetation in Gesner's (1846) record of fir (along with spruce and cedar) on the ”low tracts and swamps

westward of Fifteen Point". And it was presumably such forest-types that several early recorders had in mind when they noted that fir (along with spruce and tamarack) was one of the tree species that was an indication of the presence of poor quality soils.221 Johnstone (1822) added that such soils consisted of swampy impenetrable

215 Bain 1868-1884 (in 1873). See also Sleigh’s (1853) more generalized statement that fir (as well as the other conifers) occupied the "intervals" [i.e. low areas] in the forests of British North America,

2‘6 [Bain] 1882. 2" [Bain]1883.

2‘5 Bain 1890.

219 Also, Stewart’s (1806) statement that the best agricultural land was indicated by natural forest containing hardwood species “mixed with the different kinds of pine and fir" may refer to balsam fir, though it is not absolutely certain.

220

35,

Land Commission 1875: evidence of Donald Ferguson of Lot

22‘ Johnstone (1822) lists ‘var’ as such an indicator; MacGregor

(1828) lists ‘fir', though in his 1832 volume he changes it to “other species of the fir tribe"; Bouchette (1832) “fir"; Hill (1839) “other species of firs"; and Lawson (1851) “spruce (or fir more properly)”.