than the yellow birch: Hill (1839) said that it did not grow very large, while Selkirk (1803) noted that the birch trees at a particular spot in Lot 62 were ”scarcely larger than a man’s thigh”““6. Only slightly larger were the white birch trees that MacGregor (1828) noted in the ”places laid waste by a tremendous fire that raged in 1750”, which

he recorded as ten to twelve inches in diameter‘w.

Habitat and community relationships: Yellow birch — That yellow birch was an important component in the old-growth mixed hardwood forests of the island, is evident from both general descriptions of the island’s hardwood forests, as well as from descriptions of the forest at specific sites”. That it could also occur in the form of single species stands is noted by Johnstone (1822) and is also

the most likely reading of a comment of Curtis (1775).449

Stewart (1806) makes the interesting, if at first sight puzzling, comment that ”lands on which the original timber has been destroyed by fire, frequently grow up with yellow birch” — which he says ”indicates a better soil than when the young growth consists of white birch”.450 This implies that yellow birch could be an early successional

“6 He later discovered that the area had been “laid waste by a

great fire 30 or 40 years before". W These measurements were applied collectively by MacGregor to all of the second-growth species on the same areas: ”white birches, spruce firs, poplars and wild cherry trees“, and in his second book (MacGregor 1832), he increased the diameter to “twelve to fifteen inches”.

“8 Stewart (1806) and Johnstone (1822) list the species as an element of the island’s mixed hardwood forests in general, and it is implied that it occurred in such mixed forests by MacGregor (1828), Hill (1839) and Lawson (1851). More specifically in terms of location, Curtis (1775) lists it in such a mixed forest at New London Bay, Gray (1793) in Lot 13, Selkirk (1803) at Point Prim, Pinette, and near Wood Islands, and [Bain] (1868-1884) at Springfield, Also, in the report of the Land Commission (1875) there are references to the occurrence together of yellow birch and beech at two different sites — the wood at one site (along the Hillsborough River in Lot 34) is described as of “heavy growth" (evidence of Donald Ferguson); the other site (near Hampshire) is described as “wilderness land” (evidence of John and Henry Douse). Then, a third witness to the Commission (James Smith of Lot 20) referred generally to land that in a “wilderness state” had “grown black birch and maple"; while Francis Bain also makes reference to ‘birch' (he must mean yellow birch) with 'maple' in remnants of ‘ancient' hardwood forest at North Wiltshire ([Bain] 1882) and Elliots Mills ([Bain] 1883).

“9 See footnote 323 for beech: the same reasoning is also likely to apply to Curtis‘s ‘Which-Hazle' and 'Birch‘.

‘5’" Erdmann (1990) (p, 140), in a modern study, also notes that yellow birch is “often a pioneer species following fires, though less abundant than aspen, pin cherry and paper birch".

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tree on the better soils.451 Elsewhere he said that

”black birch” occurred on areas where the original growth of timber has not been destroyed by fire.452 In fact yellow birch was one of the hardwood species whose presence in the natural forest was taken as an indicator of soils suitable for agriculture when cleared.453 More specifically, Selkirk (1803), with his knack for recording useful ecological insights that escaped the pen of others, said that its presence in the hardwood mixture was an indicator of higher soil moisture levels: ”Black Birch (among beech and maple) when abundant seems also to prove a sufficient degree

of moisture ".454

White birch — White birch was noted to be an element of the successional forests that occurred on abandoned farmland. In the Belfast area Selkirk (1803) noted ”in several places young birches grown up over the old French clearings” (the sites would have been abandoned in 1758 — 45 years before, to the very month). Stewart (1806) also noted that ”many fine white birch trees grow in the old French cleared lands", while Johnstone

‘51 ln support of Stewart‘s observation I note from Gorham (1955)

that the Nova Scotia naturalist Titus Smith recorded in an 1835 paper that “most hemlock woods [in Nova Scotia], when killed by fires, are at first overgrown with birch hooppoles, mixed with firs; but when the birch has reached a height of 20 ft. or 30 ft., it turns mossy, and continues stationery for twenty years, during which a young growth of hemlock springs up, and most of the birches perish". I think that the use of the word ‘hooppoles' here implies that Smith is referring to yellow birch, since Perley (1847), writing about New Brunswick, had said that ”young saplings" of yellow birch were “employed almost exclusively for the hoops of casks". Smith also noted ‘yellow birch‘ (along with white birch and oak) to grow up when “an old grove of pine is destroyed", though he added that “this change is less frequent than is imagined".

‘52 Stewart 1806. This ecological distinction between what we now know to have been the same species may perhaps be due to the fact that large B. alleghaniensis trees (which Stewart would have called ‘black birch') were found in undisturbed old-growth forest, while younger trees (i.e. Stewart’s ‘yellow birch') were found on some successional areas.

‘53 Yellow birch is an element on Stewart’s (1806) “best” and "second-best" land, and probably on his third-best, though he does not specify the species for this last. It is an element on the “richest" soil of MacGregor (1828); on the soils of “superior quality" of Hill (1839); on the “good" soils of Lawson (1851); on the “first quality land" of a tenant farmer (James Smith of Lot 20) in evidence to the Land Commission (1875); and on the “best agricultural soils" of Bain (1890). Also, it is likely to have been an element in the “mixture of hardwood" indicative of Johnstone’s (1822) “best" soil (though he does not tell us the species in the

mixture) and is implied on the soils “best for growing corn“ of Curtis (1775), ‘5‘ Bain’s (1890) more general statement that it was “abundant everywhere on dry rich soils" is not necessarily in conflict with Selkirk — since Bain's comment was in relation to the whole range of island soils.