260 Mr J. W. Dawson on the Destruction and 



naturalist, as they illustrate the vicissitudes which many 

 parts of the earth's surface have experienced in ancient times, 

 the extent to which plants and animals can accommodate 

 themselves to changes of circumstances, and the natural 

 compensations which have been provided for the destruction 

 or diminution of particular species. Inquiry into such changes 

 is also of importance as a means of dispelling the mystery 

 which frequently envelopes the succession of organised beings 

 in circumstances of physical change ; a mystery which has 

 induced some naturalists to recur to the doctrines of sponta- 

 neous generation and the transmutation of species, for ex- 

 planations of phenomena which, if properly examined, would 

 have been found to result from some of the most ordinary 

 causes of the maintenance and distribution of animal and 

 vegetable life. 



In North America, and especially in those parts of it form- 

 ing the United States and British Provinces, such changes 

 have occurred with great rapidity, converting, in a few years, 

 uninhabited forests into countries having the aspect of re- 

 gions long inhabited by civilized men. The forests have 

 been destroyed, their living inhabitants extirpated or obliged 

 to adopt new modes of life, new animals and plants intro- 

 duced and naturalised ; and, indeed, a revolution effected in 

 all the departments of organised nature, in the lapse of a 

 single generation. To notice a few of these changes, with 

 reference more especially to the destruction and partial re- 

 production of forests, is my pi^esent object. The facts which 

 I propose to state have been collected principally in the pro- 

 vince of Nova Scotia. 



In their natural state, Nova Scotia and the neighbouring 

 provinces were covered with dense woods, extending from 

 the shores to the summits of the hills. These woods did not 

 form detached groves, but constituted a nearly continuous 

 sheet of foliage, the individual trees composing which were 

 so closely placed as to prevent them from assuming full and 

 rounded forms, and to oblige them to assume tall and slender 

 shapes, that each might obtain air and light. The only ex- 

 ceptions to this are certain rich and usually light soils, where 

 the forest is sometimes more open, and hills too rocky to 



