540 
SPLENIC APOPLEXY. 
Another sample of water was evidently largely impregnated 
with the drainings of the farmyard, and the evacuations of the 
animals. It must be undesirable that animals should drink 
this water, as all such impurities were highly injurious. The 
ditch water, a third sample, and apparently foul, proved on 
analysis to be the purest of any. It w T as found to contain 
only twenty-six grains of solid matter to the imperial gallon, 
and in this matter there were only four and a half grains of 
organic constituents. 
The well water at Tintinhull was a hard water, which he 
would not recommend any one to use permanently, although 
the animals apparently were uninjured by it. It contained 
some iron in solution, which tended to counteract its otherwise 
injurious influences. Another sample of water taken from a 
second well at Tintinhull, near to the one just alluded to, had, 
when he received it, no foetid smell; but it soon developed 
sulphuretted hydrogen in considerable quantities, which evi¬ 
dently arose, not so much from organic matter, as from the 
reduction of the salts of lime and other minerals. The leaden 
pipe, to which Professor Simonds had referred, would exercise 
a somewhat complicated chemical action and increase the 
fcetor; the black colour arose from the production of sulphu¬ 
retted lead. If he understood the matter aright, this disease 
prevailed in the lias district in Somersetshire. 
Professor Buckman. Not so much on the lias clays as on 
the lands adjoining them. 
Professor Voelcker continued :—On the tart lands pre¬ 
vailing on the lias clays, the herbage frequently remained 
unripe, and in this condition it produced several disorders. 
It might be worth while to chemically examine the herbage 
of the meadows where splenic apoplexy occurred, in order to 
ascertain whether an unripe condition of the grasses had any¬ 
thing to do with the disease. As regarded the condition of the 
herbage, he had found a remarkable difference between sound 
pasture and the pasture of scouring lands. Peats always 
produced sound herbage. There were clays which were well- 
drained, but which nevertheless required to be exposed to the 
air and cultivated, and for which he believed the only remedy 
was the plough. They were naturally rich ; they were not 
poor in the sense of a deficiency of food; there was plenty 
of animal and plant food in the soil, but it was all locked up, 
and it was for this reason that the herbage did not get ripe. 
He had found great differences in the chemical composition 
of the perfectly ripe produce of peat and the unripe herbage 
of scouring lands, and, he repeated, that it would be in¬ 
teresting to ascertain whether a similar difference existed in* 
the pasturage of soils where splenic apoplexy occurred. 
