The elder had sprouts an inch long, the alder was also beginning to sprout, and willows were budding." Although nowhere in Upper and Lower Canada (or in the maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia) are the forests so splendid as in parts of British Columbia, yet nevertheless when this region was first discovered the magnificence of its woodlands greatly impressed even the explorers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who were not as much given to praise of landscape beauty as are we of later times.

These Canadian forests include oaks, elms, pines and firs, chestnuts and beeches, birch trees and sycamores, maples and poplars, willows, alders, and hazelnuts (these last sometimes growing into tall trees with thick trunks).

The trees and low-growing plants are partly like those of the north-eastern United States, and partly resemble those of northern and central Europe.
Nowadays, owing to two centuries of incessant killing, the beasts and birds of Upper and Lower Canada are not nearly so abundant as they were a hundred years ago.

When Canada proper was first discovered, the wapiti red deer was still found in the basin of the St.Lawrence; it has long since been extinct.

There are, however, still lingering, reindeer in the north, and elk in the forests of the east.