SCOURING LANDS OF CENTRAL SOMERSET. 
543 
quantity of potash in the ash of the hay from peaty land 
will be found to amount to 26 # 30 per cent., and that of the 
hay from scouring-land to 36 33 per cent. Again, the per¬ 
centage of chlorine in the chlorides of these two ashes differs 
greatly; in the one it amounts to 13‘42 per cent., and in the 
other to only 9*32 per cent. We thus find a much larger 
proportion of potash salts and less silica in scouring hay than 
in sweet hay from peaty land. 
3. The proportion of nitrogenized compounds in sound 
hay is smaller than that of hay from scouring-land. Thus in 
the hay from peaty land we have not quite 9 per cent, of these 
compounds, and in one sample of hay from scouring-land at 
Meare rather more that 11 per cent., and in the second as 
much as 14J per cent, of nitrogenized compounds. 
The preceding analytical results therefore show 7 that the 
organic portion as weil as the mineral part of sound and 
scouring hay materially differ from each other in composition, 
and 1 have no doubt that other differences would have been 
brought to light had the organic portion of hay been more 
fully examined. I have confined myself to the determination 
of nitrogen in the hay, because its proportion in vegetable 
produce affords an excellent indication of its state of maturity, 
and a more complete organic analysis should be undertaken 
with the fresh and not with the dried produce. 
Not many years ago a high per-centage of nitrogen in hay, 
turnips, mangolds, and other kinds of agricultural produce 
was regarded as a proof of their superior nutritive value ; but 
a thorough investigation which I undertook on account of the 
n o 
frequent discrepancies in the calculated theoretical nutritive 
value of various articles of food, and the value assigned to 
them by practical men, has shown me that the higher pro¬ 
portion of nitrogen in one of two samples of hay, turnips, 
mangolds, &c., by no means indicates a higher feeding-value, 
but the very reverse. I have been actively engaged for more 
than three years with an inquiry into the changes which roots 
undergo in their various stages of growth, and especially 
when the}'' approach maturity. In connection with this in¬ 
quiry a great many collateral experiments were instituted, 
to which reference cannot be made in this place. Some of 
the results, however, have so direct a relation to the subject 
of this report, that I cannot refrain from stating some of the 
principal. 
Amongst other particulars I find :— 
1. That the proportion of ash and of nitrogen in unripe 
turnips, mangolds, grass, young shoots of plants, &c., is very 
much larger than in ripe and sound roots, &c. A large pro¬ 
portion of ash, and especially of nitrogen, indeed, is an excel- 
