434 SCOURING LANDS OF CENTRAL SOMERSET. 
who describe the character of the herbage as poor, 1 imagine, 
use this adjective as descriptive of a thin, wiry, stunted 
growth, such as may be observed on thin and infertile soils. 
They cannot mean " poor' 5 to signify the same as innutritious ; 
for, on the 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 nutritious as hay from common meadows. 
There would moreover be no other meaning in the expres¬ 
sion—the herbage of certain pastures scours cattle because 
it is innutritious' 5 —than is conveyed in the bare statement 
of a well-known fact. 
Everybody knows that the herbage of scouring pastures 
is innutritious ; if it were not so it would not scour. The 
question is, why is it innutritious ? 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 innutritious ? This question may be answered 
decidedly in the negative. If, in consequence of a defi¬ 
ciency or total want of certain substances which are food to 
plants, scouring land produced, 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 generally a great deal worse in this respect 
than poorer and less productive 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 pastures. 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 
