INTRODUCTION

This publication is the third in a series of reports in which I have been examining and analysing historical documents containing descriptions and comments relevant to the forests of Prince Edward Island. In the first two reports (Sobey 2002, 2006) | extracted and analysed the forest-related documents surviving from the French and British colonial periods, extending from 1534 to about 1900. In this third report I examine six publications from the twentieth century that make extensive reference to the forests of Prince Edward Island, all of them written by professional scientists, and ranging in date from 1929 to 1961.1

These studies were carried out by persons from a range of scientific disciplines: three were foresters (Halliday 1937, Rowe 1959 and Loucks 1961), two were geographers (Stilgenbauer 1929 and Clark 1959), while the sixth (Erskine 1960) was a botanist. It is thus not surprising that the studies differed greatly in their aims. Halliday, Rowe and Loucks aimed to describe and classify the forests of a large geographical area: for the first two it was the forests of the whole of Canada, for Loucks it was those of the Maritime provinces. Thus, in their studies the forests of Prince Edward Island were but a small part of a much larger study. In the other three studies, describing the forest was peripheral to more particular aims: Stilgenbauer's aim was to produce a geographical picture of the island as it was in the 19203, with his brief description of the forest serving only to set the scene for his main work; Clark's forest comments comprise less than a page in a lengthy book which aimed to provide a comprehensive study of the whole historical geography of the island since European settlement; while Erskine’s description of the forests was part of an introduction to the first comprehensive listing of the island’s flora. Thus, in all six studies, the sections on the island’s forests are relatively brief, and largely of a qualitative and general nature. Even so, by assembling them together in one report we are not only given a picture of the level

1 This research is a follow-up to earlier work that I have carried out on the current forests of the island based on data collected in the 1990-1992 Prince Edward Island Forest Inventory (see Sobey 1993, 1995a, 1995b; Sobey & Glen 1999, 2002, 2004). Some of these reports are available from the P.E.I. Forests, Fish and Wildlife Division.

of the 'official scientific’ knowledge of the island's forests up to the 19603, but we also get an insight into several aspects of the forest.

It should be noted that the six scientists varied widely in their first-hand knowledge of the forests. It seems likely that Halliday and Rowe had never visited the island — they had certainly not examined its forests in any detail. Erskine, however, spent two summers on the island in detailed field studies, while Stilgenbauer spent at least one summer. Loucks' team had certainly visited the island, while Clark was also very familiar with the island in general and especially with the literature and statistics connected with it.

THE TREATMENT OF THE EXTRACTS

As was so for my two earlier reports on the historical forest—related documents, I considered it useful to publish the twentieth century material in the form of a source-book so that readers would have direct and easy access to the information contained in the original descriptions, without having to search for out-of—print reports.2

The transcriptions — For each of the six studies I have extracted from much lengthier works only the material that I considered relevant to the classification and description of the forests of Prince Edward Island. In transcribing them I have used the original words of the author, with the few additions I have made to the text (usually for purposes of clarification or explanation) being put in square brackets, and where these do not use the author’s words, they have been put in italics. At the start of each extract I have included a brief introduction in which I comment generally on the relevance of its contents to the study of the island's forests. In the extracts themselves I have used bolding in order to draw attention to particular points, and where any of the extracts is referred to in any part of this report (including the footnotes), I have bolded the author’s name. For five of the extracts I have also included copies of

2 One of the studies was initially very difficult to obtain: I had long been aware of F. A. Stilgenbauer’s 1929 dissertation on the geography of Prince Edward Island because of a reference to it in A. H. Clark's Three Centuries and the Island. My first attempts to obtain a copy were unsuccessful, but the library at UPEI finally succeeded in the summer of 1998, and as a result, a microfilm copy is now available there.