East Point)“; at Springfield in Lot 67“"; as a component of the ’primitive’ or 'ancient’ forest at ’Wiltshire', Elliots Mills and near York Pointm; in another ’wilderness’ remnant at Hampshire‘“; and on a farm along the north shore of the Hillsborough River at Marshfieldm. ’Birch’ (the species is not specified, but was probably yellow birch) also formed an element of the same hardwood forest that contained beech ”buried by the drifting sands” near the mouth of St. Peters Bay, noted by Gesner (1846), while in Prince County, on the mainland opposite Hog Island, he found ’birch' trees (probably also yellow birch) at sea level in a hardwood forest that had succumbed to the encroaching sea. White birch (B. papyrifera) was recorded at several locations usually in association with successional sites: in the East Point area‘m, along the shore at Lot 62434, in the Belfast area”, and at Pinette“. It was also recorded in the Charlottetown area‘m, including the area "across the water" from the “2" Stewart 1831. ‘29 Bain 1868-1884 (in 1873). 430 At Wiltshire: “on the Wiltshire road, about the head-waters of Howell‘s Brook": [Bain] 1882; at Elliots Mills: [Bain] (1883); near York Point: “on the rear of Howard's farm": Bain 1868-1884 (1879). ‘3‘ Land Commission 1875: evidence of John Douse, concerning 62 acres of “wilderness land" on Lot 31. 432 35). Land Commission 1875: evidence of Donald Ferguson (of Lot ‘33 Anon. 1762. 434 Selkirk 1803. ‘35 [Lawson] 1877-1878. ‘36 Selkirk 1803. Selkirk actually wrote: “about Pinette and opposite to it are several places covered with young birches, grown up over the old French clearings". Such phrasing implies clearings on both sides of the Pinette River. But where along this rambling and branched river were these clearings? We know from Holland’s 1765 map (PARO Map 06170) that there was an extensive area of cleared land at the site of the French settlement of Pinette (it is also shown, seemingly in a more accurate fashion, on the map of ‘Hillsborough Bay’ in J. F. W. Desbarres’ Atlantic Neptune [UPEI Map Collection, Robertson Library]). In the midst of this clearing Holland‘s map shows nineteen houses in a compact settlement — the cleared land is somewhat more extensive in Desbarres' map. (In the table attached to Holland‘s map 22 houses and 300 acres of cleared land are listed for Lot 58 — see Holland (1765): Plan of the Island of St. John). It is likely that this village and clearing could be either Selkirk's ‘Pinette‘ or his ‘opposite'. In either case Selkirk's phrasing suggests two clearings across from each other along the river — though only one is shown in the Holland and Desbarres maps. 437 Patterson 1770. 204 townm. More generally, white birch was also recorded as prominent in the area of the ’great’ or ’tremendous’ fire that had ravaged the north—east of the island during the French periodm. Tree sizes — Stewart (1806) explicitly states that ’black birch’ [i.e. yellow birch] was the largest of the island’s deciduous trees““°, while Hill (1839) observed that it was "a much larger size than beech”. Curtis (1775) included his birch and ’which hazle’“1 among those trees that he said were ”very large” — larger than the equivalent species in Englandm, while Selkirk (1803) similarly noted that the ’black’ and the ’yellow' birch (as also beech and maple) grew to ”a great size”. However, only two of the recorders give numerical values: MacGregor (1828) said the trunks could be three to four feet in diameter, while Bain (1890) says they were sometimes as much as six f e et443 444 Though Stewart (1806) commented that white birch grew to a large size in the forest445 (including, he says, on the old French cleared lands), it seems to have been usually much smaller ‘38 Chappell 1775-1818 (4 Sept. 1798). ‘39 Johnstone1822; MacGregor1828, “0 Somewhat comparable is Sutherland’s (1861) statement that “birch timber is our largest for exportation", and [Bain’s] (1882) description of yellow birch as “the giant of our deciduous forests". Stewart also made the comment that the “black birch‘ on the island (as well as the other main trees) was larger than the same species on the adjacent parts of the continent. 441 See footnote 419. “2 The two British birch species (Betula pendula and B. pubescens) rarely attain the size of even the North American white birch (Beta/a papyn'fera), though the wych elm can grow to 40 metres (Press & Hosking 1992) — I could find no statement on its diameter, though a lithograph in Johns (1903) indicates a large trunk size. “3 Eight years earlier Bain's estimates had been lower: he had written that the ‘great trunks' of yellow birch were “occasionally ten or twelve feet in circumference" ([Bain] 1882). These would equate to diameters of 3 ft. 2 in. and 3 ft. 10 in — considerably less than the six feet he later noted. “‘ In addition, Chappell (1775-1818) gives the measured lengths of eight ‘black birch' logs that he helped out and prepare at New London in 1778 for ‘Mr. Colbeck‘: the lengths ranged from 26 feet 10 inches to 72 feet 7 inches, but he does not give their diameters. And, the island’s House of Assembly (1773-1849) in 1820 passed an act that set the minimum dimensions for ‘merchantable‘ birch ‘ton timber' at 11 inches square — raised to 13 inches in 1849. These would have required a minimum tree diameter of 151/2 and 18% inches respectively, after the bark had been removed. “5 As an indicator of the size of the larger white birch trees he said that the Mi‘kmaq could make a canoe “of the bark of a Single tree which will carry five or six people".