SCOURING LANDS OF CENTRAL SOMERSET. 299 
9. The composition of these waters has not as yet been 
ascertained. 
10. Soft or rain water, and the black ditch water from peaty 
land, are preferred by cattle to the hard-water springs of the 
lias. 
11. The black waters from peaty soils are always soft; 
that is, they contain but a small proportion of mineral and 
saline constituents. 
12. The dark colour of water from peat is not due to any 
astringent principle, but to compounds of humic and ulmic 
acids, two organic acids of humus. 
cl. Facts connected with Herbage. 
13. No satisfactory evidence exists showing that in scouring 
meadows particular plants grow in abundance, which, like 
Linum catharticum (purging flax), possess purging properties. 
14. The herbage on many scouring pastures has by no 
means the appearance of that of poor, hungry pastures, but 
rather the reverse. 
13. It has never been shown that the produce from scouring 
land contains anything injurious to the health of animals fed 
upon it. 
16. Manures appear to increase the evil in exactly the 
proportion in which they increase the luxuriant growth of 
the young herbage. 
17. During the driest summer months in the year the 
upland herbage possesses the greatest scouring property. 
18. After the first frost in November the herbage loses 
more or less completely its prejudicial character, and during 
the colder and wetter months of the year pastures affected 
by this evil exhibit it only in a slight degree, or not at all. 
We shall presently see the practical bearing of these facts, 
which to my mind seem well established. They are empirical, 
but most of them may be explained in a simple, rational 
manner, and not a few can be subjected to an analytical 
inquiry, which affords us a clear insight into the causes of 
this dreadful complaint. 
At the request of the Council of the Bath and West of 
England Agricultural Society, I visited last summer (in 
company with Mr. Poole, to whose kindness I am greatly 
indebted) some of the most scouring districts on the Polden 
Hills ; and on that occasion I took on thespot samples of water 
from a stream of water from the lias cutting of the Bristol 
and Exeter Railway at Dunball, and from a stream of water 
which breaks out at Ford Farm on the south side of the hill 
