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.  There are also Virginian deer (Mazama), but there is no bison (and, so far as we know, never has been).  There is no prongbuck, and many other creatures characteristic of the United States and British Columbia are not found in Upper and Lower Canada or in the maritime provinces.  The tree porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus), which the Canadians call “Urson”, or “Little Bear” is found still in the well-wooded regions of eastern and southern Canada, as well as in British Columbia and Alaska.  In southern Canada there is the wood hare (Lepus sylvaticus), and in the east and north the varying hare (L. americanus) which turns white in winter.

Perhaps the most characteristic animal of this region was and is still the beaver, though the beaver is found all over British North America as far north as the Saskatchewan province and westwards into British Columbia.

It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief (recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose.  Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook it for a giant beaver.  But as we know that there were once giant beavers (Trogontherium) as large as a bear, existing in England, it is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.

The beaver of North America is a very similar animal to the beaver which used to exist wild in Wales, England, France, Germany, and central Europe, and which still lingers in some parts of the Rhine valley, Poland, Russia, and Siberia; but the American form is classified as a separate species—­Castor canadensis.