JUNGLE BOOKS, The, that is to say, the two volumes entitled, (The Jungle Book) and (The Second Jungle Book,' in which Rudyard Kipling has collected most of his stories wherein animals are leading actors, were originally pub lished 2 June and 16 Nov. 1894. The first volume, The Jungle Book,' narrates in nine magical tales the history of Mowgli, reared from babyhood in the jungle by fostering wolves — how he is adopted as one of the wolf pack, how he is instructed and befriended by Baloo the wise bear, Kaa the python and Bag heera the black panther, how he is rescued from the Bandar-Log or Monkey People, how he slays Shere Khan, the tiger, how he be comes the acknowledged master of the jungle, and finally how he returns to his own kind, yet still remains in touch with the jungle dwellers. The collection is diversified by inter ludes in verse, such as °The Law of the Jungle' and the "Road-Song of the Bandar Log" which accentuates the satire embodied in the description of the boastful, scatterbrained Monkey Folk. The Second Jungle Book' con
tains seven stories, among them that of uRiklci Tikki-Tavi* the mongoose, "Toomai of the Elephants,' "The Undertakers"— which is con cerned with three sinister scavengers, the croco dile, the jackal and the adjutant crane,— and (*The Miracle of Purun Bhagat,' a beautiful tale of an old recluse and the beasts that loved him. "To those who read between the lines," says Frederic Taber Cooper, °the Jungle Books are far more than a new childhood classic. They are the life of modern India, told in allegory, and in Kaa and Bagheera and all the rest we have the types of native life, with its stored-up wisdom of old, primeval instincts, its simplicity of outlook upon the present-day world.' Kipfing's animals are peculiarly con vincing. They act and talk — when they do i talk,— in accordance with their animal char acteristics, and never give the impression that they are humans masking in fur, feathers or scales.