Hill (1839) considered it "a clean and useful wood”, and said that it was ”much used in ship building, being found to be very durable under water”.330 Very similarly, Perley (1847) said that it was ”much used” on the island in ship—building ”for those parts of vessels which are constantly wet", for which he cited the testimony of ”an old and experienced ship-builder residing at Richmond Bay”, that on the lower part of vessels it could be "sound at forty years” and ”in such situations fully equal to English oak in strength and durability”.331 Bain (1890) noted that it was used by turners and cabinet-makers”, while almost a century earlier Stewart (1806) had noted that the wood was sometimes exported.

Firewood — The principal use to which beech seems to have been put, however, was firewood: three different recorders note that beech was considered the best firewood on the islandm, with another commenting that it made up a large part

of the wood used for that purpose”.

Land clearance — Beech forest was seen to be particularly easily cleared for agriculture. Johnstone (1822) states this best of all: ”the land where it abounds is the easiest cleared both as to the cutting, burning, and rotting of the stumps”. The stumps were considered to take between four and seven years to rot to the point where they

33° A property that is exactly confirmed by Marie-Victorin (1964) (p.

156) in his Flore Laurentienne for Quebec province, who notes that it is used in “construction maritime, i/ se conserve sous l'eau".

33‘ incidentally, Earle Lockerby has passed to me a reference to beech in the French records for the island that l was not aware of when I wrote my report on the French period (Sobey 2002): on 10 March 1722, the Count of St. Pierre (to whose Company of He Saint-Jean the whole island had been granted in 1719), wrote to Louis Denys de La Ronde at Port La—Joie telling him to be careful to use oak and not beech in a 300-ton vessel that he asked him to build. [Ref: Comte de Saint-Pierre to Louis Denys de La Ronde, 10 March 1722, NAC, MG 18 H13, Denys Family Papers, Item No. 49, Microfilm Reel No. F-183]. The count would have been aware of the presence of both oak and beech on the island from letters he had received the previous year from his officials on the island [see Gotteville (1720) and La Ronde (1721) in Sobey (2002)]. The counts bias in favour of oak is a reflection of European attitudes to oak as the wood par excellence for ship-building.

33? Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) regularly used beech for the ‘rims' of his spinning wheels,

“3 Walsh 1803; Stewart 1806; Bain 1890. Also Plessis (1012) said that the houses were heated with beech (as well as white birch).

33“ Sutherland 1861. In 1802 we find Benjamin Chappell (1775- 1818) measuring beech cordwood for clients, and Dawson (1868) also referred to the cutting down of beech forests for firewood.

could be pulled out”. Hill (1839) said that the beech was the ”staple” producer of potash, which he thought ought to have been exported from the island.

Beech mast — The irregularity in the seed production of beech (or mast, as it is traditionally called) was noted by Stewart (1806), who recorded that it was "produced in vast quantities in some seasons”.336 It was also observed to be an important food for some of the island’s native woodland fauna: among the species observed to feed on it were "squirrels, partridges and mice principally during autumn and winter”337. Stewart (1806) noted that these same three species — and of the squirrels, especially ”the striped squirrel” (i.e. the chipmunk) — were especially abundant in the year following a mast year, and he thus deduced that the ”great crops of beech mast produced occasionally in certain districts” were the principal cause of the vole plagues that had occasionally afflicted the island’s settlers.338 He went on to reason that when the beech forests would be cut down, the effect of these vole

outbreaks would also decrease.339

However, not only the native fauna benefited from the beechmast: pigs, running at large in the woods, fed on it”). Stewart (1806) noted that:

335 Johnstone (1822) thought “five years at the shortest, but more commonly six or seven“; Selkirk (1805) said five or six years, though “if left a year or two longer, they come out with perfect ease”; while MacGregor (1828) thought four or five years. [Robinson] (1798), however, said that “eight, nine or ten years" was required.

336 Bain (1868-1884) in his field notebooks recorded such mast years in 1877 and 1881.

“7 MacGregor 1828. Stewart (1806) listed the same three species, while Bain (1890) noted that its “nuts were food for forest animals" in general, specifically recording in 1881 in his journal a jay feeding on beech mast (Bain 1868-1884). See Appendix 2 for an assessment of the importance of the island‘s beech forests in supplying food to the native forest fauna.

338 John Lawson (1851), also attributed a rise in ruffed grouse numbers to the supply of beech-mast and other woodland food.

339 Plessis (1812) also noted the association between beech-mast production and the vole outbreaks, which he also said occurred in the year following a mast year, as did [Lawson] (1877-1878). This same connection between beech-mast production and the vole plagues had been noted by some of the recorders during the French period (see Sobey 2002, p. 154), and some had come to conclusions similar to Stewart and Plessis. See Appendix 2 for my deduction, contrary to accepted opinion, that the vole species was the red-backed vole (C/eithrionomys gapperl) rather than the meadow vole (Microtus pensylvanicus).

3‘0 Stewart (1806) gives the most extensive description of the practice, but reference is also made to it before the Land Commission (1860) by a delegation of farmers from Lot 34, and

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