More than any other writer, Gilbert White (1720-93) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and song in birds. His precise, scrupulously honest and unaffectedly witty observations led him to interpret animals' behaviour in a unique manner. This collection of his letters to the explorer and naturalist Daines Barrington and the eminent zoologist Thomas Pennant - White's intellectual lifelines from his country-village home - are a beautifully written, detailed evocation of the lives of the flora and fauna of eighteenth-century England.

'Natural Symbols is clearly a major work in the greatest of sociological traditions, the Durkheimian. It has an originality unmatched for a generation among the writings of anthropologists. It raises questions that are important and soluble not in the field but by the harder, less inviting, work of reflection and analysis.' - Times Literary Supplement
'Natural Symbols remains the book most important to understanding Mary Douglas's thought, and this fact places it amongst the most significant books of theory written by anthropologists during the twentieth century.' - Richard Fardon, SOAS
'As timeless as the subtitle. Essential reading for all those enthralled by her brilliant insights into the meaning of the Bible thirty years on.' - John Sawyer, Department of Religious Studies, Lancaster University
'Mary Douglas's writing remains as fresh and vivid as ever. The ideas put forward in Natural Symbols have been taken up well beyond the discipline of anthropology, and should remain compulsory reading for all students of religion and society.' - Fiona Bowie, University of Bristol
It has an originality unmatched for a generation among the writings of anthropologists. - Times Literary Supplement