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The many billions of dollars invested in canal irrigation in recent decades have had disappointing results. Rarely have projected benefits in well-being or production been achieved. In consequence, in the mid-1980s, further vast sums are being spent throughout the Third World on programmes for rehabilitation, canal lining, on farm development, and farmers' organisation. In this book, Robert Chambers shows that much of this policy and practice is based on misleading research and misdiagnosis. When applied to the complexity and uniqueness of canal irrigation systems, the normal professionalism of civil and agricultural engineers, agronomists, economists, and sociologists, leaves gaps which are keys to better performance. In successive chapters, five such gaps are analysed and presented: main system management, including the scheduling and delivery of water, and communications; canal irrigation at night; management of canal systems jointly by farmers and officials; professional conditions

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in 1844. Starting with the genesis of the solar system, it progresses systematically through such topics as the formation of the earth, the origins of marine life, the emergence of reptiles, birds and other life forms, and the evolution of human life. Drawing widely upon contemporary ideas from astronomy, biology, geology, linguistics, and anthropology, it seeks to establish the 'hypothesis of an organic creation by natural law'. Preceding Darwin's Origin of Species by fifteen years, Vestiges ignited a storm of controversy by pitting natural law and its role in what would soon come to be known as 'evolution' against the generally accepted Victorian belief that the universe was created by God. In 1884, it was revealed that the author was the British publisher Robert Chambers. This fifth edition of the work also contains its 1845 sequel, Explanations.