SCOURING LANDS OF CENTRAL SOMERSET, 
547 
growth takes places much later in the season than in less 
retentive and warmer soils. In districts where scouring pre¬ 
vails, the haymaking season is generally later than in other 
localities; but, although delayed, the grass-crop on the worst 
scouring meadows in most seasons does not quite sufficiently 
mature, and in consequence of the immature and green con¬ 
dition in which the grass is cut down, the hay scours. 
Pastures which do not scour, though situated in the same 
district where scouring land abounds, either have a more 
porous subsoil or the blue lias-clay lies at a depth not reached 
by the roots of plants. On such land the herbage has a 
chance to make a start earlier in the season, and to grow more 
regularly and toget more readily matured than on scouringland. 
Lias-clay land thus often scours, not because it is too poor 
or because it is too wet, or because it contains something or 
other inimical to vegetation—but because it is very abundant 
in plant-food ; and, from the peculiar position of the subsoil 
on scouring land, its depth and impervious, highly tenacious 
character cause a too luxuriant growth of the herbage during 
the warmer summer months. Consumed in this condition 
the herbage is immature and scours, even when made into hay. 
But should the summer be long and warm, and a farmer 
have the discretion to delay haymaking, he will find that 
scouring land will produce, in his case, good wholesome hay. 
In wet summers, and during the rainy part of the year, the 
evil ceases either altogether, or is much less aggravated than 
during the dry and warm summer months. This is perfectly 
intelligible, for it is during the warm and dry summer months 
that young immature clover-leaves and grass-shoots are most 
abundantly developed on scouring land. For the same reason 
the grass on water-meadows scours most during the summer 
months, and not during the winter and early part of the spring. 
The preceding analytical proofs and agricultural facts war¬ 
rant the conclusions that will be found in this paper. For 
the convenience of the readers the leading conclusions may r 
here be briefly recapitulated : 
1. Lias-clay soils contain nothing injurious to vegetation. 
2. These clays contain abundance of mineral plant-food. 
3. The waters in the lias formation are very hard ; many 
possess medicinal properties, and, no doubt, scour cattle that 
drink them. 
4. In some exceptional instances land scours on account 
of being inefficiently drained. 
5. In most cases, however, the evil can be traced directly 
to the immature condition in which the herbage is consumed 
by cattle on scouring land, or made into hay. 
6. This immature condition of the herbage is most notable 
