It is difficult to know the exact variation of water content due to the occurrence of the hysteresis. According to experiments of the hysteresis, the variation of moisture retention and specific water capacity of unsaturated soil in alternating environments of wetting and drying is discussed. The result showed that there was not a simple relationship among those hydraulic characteristics in the unsaturated soil. The hysteretic model can reflect the variation of water content due to the effect of the hysteresis and acquire a better estimation of the relationship between specific water capacity and matric head. The maximum error between the predicted value of theoretical model and the results of experiments is 4.9%, which was resulted from the method of boundary curve. Moreover, the estimation by using scanning curve can lower the error from 4.9% to 2.0%.