Vegetation of Northern Cape Breton. 389 



Fernow ('12, pp. 20, 24) estimated the commercirlly productive 

 forest area of the "1200 square miles of plateau" at about 780 

 square miles, the unproductive area being- largely occupied by 

 barrens. He describes the forest as "an almost unbroken pure 

 balsam fir forest, with only 15 per cent, to 25 per cent, of spruce, 

 except in the black spruce swamps, and about three per cent, of 

 birch," in which "the trees run from 6 to 14 inches in diameter, 

 occasionally up to 18 inches, with 36 feet log length, and ten 

 trees to the cord." Among the sample plots measured in con- 

 nection with this survey, some 180 in all, many ran from fifty 

 to sixty cords per acre, with an average of at least twenty. The 

 forest is of value chiefly for pulpwood; saw timber is scarce. 

 On a basis of the figures obtained, Fernow estimates that the 

 area contains twelve million cords of pulpwood, or an amount 

 equal to that which is computed to be present in the entire 

 province of Nova Scotia outside of northern Cape Breton, an 

 area more than sixteen times as large. And while these facts 

 are primarily of economic import, they are also of ecological 

 interest, since they serve to emphasize the dissimilarity between 

 the forests of this region and those in other parts of Nova 

 Scotia. 



Apropos, it may well be suggested here that while, as has 

 been shown in preceding pages, conditions over much of the 

 lowland are favorable to the development of forests of the 

 deciduous climax type, they are even more so to the growth of 

 coniferous forests. It is only through their inability, in the 

 long run and under natural conditions, to cope successfully with 

 their southern competitors that the northern conifers do not 

 today constitute the predominating- element in the primeval, 

 as well as in the second growth forests of this region. Both 

 climate and soil are more favorable here than in the highland. 

 It is the conviction of the writer that the commercial production 

 of spruce and balsam fir in the lowland of northern Cape Breton 

 offers large possibilities for the future. 



II. THE REGIONAL CLIMAX ASSOCIATION-TYPE: THE 

 CLIMAX FOREST 



The trees of the climax forest. — The general aspect of these 

 forests is well portrayed by Figs. 47, 49. The balsam fir is by 

 far the most abundant species, comprising ordinarily more than 



