their ‘evils’ was considered so great that an official program of bear control with the aim of extermination was instituted in the 17903“. It involved the payment of a bounty of 15 shillings per bear (a large sum in a pioneer settlement), and remained in effect until the 1860s“. Vass (1987) estimates that between 1820 and 1861 bounties were paid on over a thousand bears“, which must have provided a useful source of income for a few skilled hunters“. Apart from the bounty, the bear provided other resources to some members of the island’s human population: its skin was especially valuable: in 1808 a bearskin was said to be worth from 15 to 30 shillings“, and it was also a source of food for some residents, especially the Acadians during their refugee years, and the Mi’kmaqsg, and seemingly for others as well“.

We are told a little about the bear’s natural diet: several writers noted that it fed primarily on 'berries’, ’wild fruits’ and ’small shrubs’s‘, as well

suppositious, This is a similar conclusion to Stewart (1806) and Johnstone (1822), both of whom had no evidence of a person ever having been killed by a bear on the island. The only new information that I can add to Hornby‘s list of stories of bears killing people is Benjamin Chappell’s (1775-1818) recording on 20 October 1806 that “some man said be kill'd by the Bear at John Bowyers" — but it is evident that Chappell himself is careful to record the story as an unverified rumour, [From Chappell's recording that on 20 February 1802, his son was “over at John Bowyer‘s" I think that the ‘John Bowyers’ of the bear incident was probably in Lot 48, just across the Hillsborough River from Charlottetown — in 1880 Meacham's Atlas (p. 99) shows four Bovyer farms at Bunburyj

5“ Vass (1987) says that bounties were instituted from the 17905, though I note that Bagster (1861) (not extracted), in a review of the island's laws, says that bears were the subject of a law in 1781. However, the first law that I could find in government records was for 1825 (House of Assembly 1773-1849 (see 1825)).

55 Vass 1987. 55 Because in most years the amount paid on bounties for bears and lynx were lumped together, it is impossible to get accurate numbers for either species from the surviving records (Vass 1987). 57 Johnstone (1822) met a ‘Highlander' who claimed to have killed 38 bears in 29 years.

58 Anon. (1808). The high value of its skin is also mentioned by Curtis (1775), MacGregor (1828), and Sutherland (1861).

59 Holland (1765: March) and Patterson (1770) report that the bear was a food source for the Acadian population, while

Johnstone (1822) said that the Indians were especially fond of them,

5° Sutherland (1861) said the flesh was sometimes eaten, while Bagster (1861) said that “bear hams [were] esteemed" by some people. Webber (1992) quotes the price of bear meat at four

pence per pound in the Morell area in the 1790s (the same price as the meat of domesticated animals).

6‘ Stewart 1806; MacGregor 1828; Sutherland 1861; Bain 1890. At East Point in the days when bears were “very common", eleven

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as on insects (ant hills“ and grubs in old fallen trees63 were favourite foods), and on smelts in the spring“. Curiously, none of the recorders mention them feeding on beech mast. There is evidence from elsewhere that black bears feed on beech mast, and it is likely to have been an abundant, if periodic, food supply on the island“.

The marten — The marten (Martes americana) occurs in fifteen of the seventeen lists (Table 2-1). The only comments on its abundance are Stewart's (1806) that it was ”a very shy little animal, seldom seen in the woods, though some years in great abundance"“, and Sutherland's (1861) inclusion of it among those mustelids that were "much more numerous” than the ”comparatively scarce” otter. Bain (1890) noted that it was ”a woodland animal nesting in hollow trees and feeding on birds and small animals", and they also appear to have fed on voles during the vole out-breaks“. None of the recorders seemed aware of its approaching extirpation, for at some

period, perhaps even in the late nineteenth

“full-grown bears" were observed “at one sight” in a blueberry barren ((Lawson] 1877-1878),

5’ Stewart 1806, MacGregor 1828.

63 Stewart 1806.

6‘ Stewart 1806; MacGregor 1828, 65 Vass (1987), using material from elsewhere in North America, lists beech mast as an important element in the black bear‘s diet, while Telfer (2004) says that in the past black bears in Nova Scotia sought out beech mast as a high fat and protein food in preparation for hibernation. I also note that Perley (1847) in his ‘Repon‘ on the Forest Trees of New Brunswick’ said that bears in that province “fed on [beech-nuts] largely". The only hint of such for the island is Hornby's (1987) extract from an unpublished manuscript “My First Bear Hunt" by John Hunter Duvar, that includes “nuts", in a diet comprising also “berries, ants, rabbits, and mice". (According to Campbell (1990), Hunter Duvar resided at Mill River, Lot 5, from 1857 to 1899),

66 Though Stewart offered no explanation for this variation in marten abundance, we may assume that they varied with the abundance of their prey. Elsewhere Stewart says that squirrels, mice and chipmunks increased greatly after a beech mast year, and we may presume that marten numbers may also have followed them. By the way, Nicholas Denys writing in 1672 (see Sobey 2002, p. 152) had noted that martens in the Acadian region were more abundant every two to three years.

67 Donald MacLeod in a memoir, wrote that during a “mouse plague“ in 1813 martens (as well as cats) fed on the ‘mice‘ “till they died from over-gorging". Although he refers to the ‘plague' as being “over all Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island", his source appears to have been a man living in Pictou in 1845 who had been “driven out of Isle St. John by the mice", and it may thus be that the martens in question were living on the island rather than on the mainland. (Ref: MacLeod, D. (1876) Memoir of Norman Mac/eod. DD. by his Brother, Belford Brothers, Toronto (pp. 156-57)]