THE ATLANTIC FOREST REGION 389 



styled in the slang of to-day " land boomers." " New England's 



Prospects " was one of these, and it drew a comparison at the expense 



of the Virginia region with the hope, no doubt, of inducing families 



to come over and settle. Wood says: 



Virginia having no winter to speak of, but extreame hot Summers, hath 

 dried up much English bloud, and by pestiferous diseases swept away many 

 lusty bodies changing their complexion, not into swarthiness, but into palenesse : 

 so that when as they come for trading into our parts, wee can know many of 

 them by their faces. ... In New England both men and women keepe their 

 natural complexions, insomuch as seamen wonder when they arrive in those 

 parts, to see their country-men so fresh and ruddy. 



In another place the same writer says: 



The hard Winters are commonly the fore-runners of pleasant Spring-times 

 and fertile Summers, being judged likewise to make much for the health of 

 our English bodies. 



There has been considerable speculation on the subject of climatic 

 influence in the moulding of an " American type." The moist climate 

 of England presents a marked contrast with the drier continental winds 

 of the region east of the Eocky Mountains, and a certain change in the 

 physical type, since the settlement of the country is undoubtedly a 

 fact. Unfortunately, however, there are no exact data and we are still 

 left in the lurch with only our theories. No doubt the American 

 atmosphere by virtue of the " cold wave " possesses a higher electrical 

 potential and a more drying effect upon the tissues than does the 

 atmosphere of Great Britain and western Europe. This may increase 

 nerve tension, though it is by no means clear in just what way the 

 American climate has altered the European type. The different effect 

 of landscape, which is largely a matter of atmosphere, must have in- 

 fluenced the European mind in some degree, at least in accentuating 

 the idea of greater expanse. The contrast between the sky of England 

 and that of America assuredly is most striking. The English sky 

 has the appearance of being less wind-swept, and the sunshine has the 

 quality of having been sifted through cloudy vapors much more 

 obviously than the sky in America. This has the effect of softening 

 or toning down the outlines of the typical English landscape, at the 

 same time making the sky seem more imminent. In the American sky 

 there is less of this apparent nearness ; more of what Lowell would call 

 the " emancipating spaces." These landscape and sky effects, at the 

 same time exist largely in the eye of the beholder. It seems to be a 

 habit of mind to interpret the facts of nature in terms of one's own 

 sense impressions — to see things, as it were, through temperamental 

 glasses. 



The early settlers found spring invading this new land — creeping 

 up river valleys, touching the meadows and woods with its young 

 green — and the farmer still finds spring invading this homeland of 

 the Atlantic slope through the valleys of the Susquehanna, Delaware, 



