14 VOELCKER on the Scouring Lands 



one hand, the poorest herbage may be and often is very nutritious, 

 and on the other hand the most luxuriant grass-crops as for 

 instance, the hay from water-meadows is by no means so nutri- 

 tious as hay from common meadows. There would moreover 

 be no other meaning in the expression, " the herbage of certain 

 pastures scours cattle because it is innutritions" than is con- 

 veyed in the bare statement of a well-known fact. 



Everybody knows that the herbage of scouring pastures is 

 innutritions ; if it were not so it would not scour. The question 

 is, why is it innutritions ? Is it the want of a proper supply of 

 organic and mineral constituents in the soil, which has the effect 

 of producing a stunted, thin, and wiry herbage, supposed to be 

 innutritions ? This question may be answered decidedly in the 

 negative. If, in consequence of a deficiency or total want of 

 certain substances which are food to plants, scouring land pro- 

 duced, as is supposed, a herbage deficient in the proper elements 

 of nutrition, the application of manures would remedy the evil, 

 but experience teaches that the use of manures aggravates the 

 mischief instead of abating or curing it. 



But it is hardly necessary to bring forward other evidence to 

 show that this theory can only exist in the minds of those who 

 are practically unacquainted with the subject. It ill accords with 

 well-known facts. 



The herbage on peat-land is proverbially poor, and yet it does 

 not scour. On the other hand some of the worst scouring 

 meadows produce a herbage to all appearance as luxuriant and 

 succulent as can be desired. Indeed the more luxuriant pastures, 

 in the districts where scouring amongst cattle prevails, are gene- 

 rally a great deal worse in this respect than poorer and less pro- 

 ductive fields. However, no man, I believe, be he ever so well 

 acquainted with the subject, by merely inspecting a field, can 

 positively say whether it scours or not. There is nothing peculiar 

 in the appearance of the herbage that distinguishes it from sound 

 pastures, and yet, I imagine, there must be an essential difference 

 between sweet and wholesome grass and that from scouring pas- 

 tures. In most cases, I believe, the herbage must be regarded as the 

 more direct cause of the complaint. For this reason my attention 

 was specially directed to the study of the chemical characters which 

 belong to sound and scouring herbage. At the same time I have 

 endeavoured to investigate some peculiarities of scouring land, 

 which I have every reason to believe tend to produce immature, 

 abnormally constituted, and on this account unwholesome 

 herbage. 



The hay from scouring pastures, when made rather green, 

 appears to possess the same injurious properties which tlis- 



