They would see in the wheat-fields patches of the crop sickly, weak, feeble, and altogether poor; that was where the water had stood and destroyed the natural power of the seed.

The same cause gave origin to that mass of weeds which was the standing disgrace of arable districts.
But men shut their eyes wilfully to these plain facts, and cried out that the rain had ruined them.

It was not the rain--it was their own intense dislike of making any improvement.

The _vis inertiae_ of the agricultural class was beyond the limit of language to describe.

Why, if the land had been drained the rain would have done comparatively little damage, and thus they would have been independent of the seasons.