Books published by publisher London : Macmillan and Co. and New York

The reader is requested to bear in mind that this volume lays no claim to scholarship, independent research, or originality of view. Its aim has been to select and collate, from sources not always easily accessible to the general reader, certain facts and conclusions bearing upon a subject of acknowledged interest. In so dealing with one of the many modes of primitive religion, it is perhaps inevitable that the writer should seem to exaggerate its importance, and in isolating a given series of data to undervalue the significance of the parallel facts from which they are severed. It is undeniable that the worship of the spirit-inhabited tree has usually, if not always, been linked with, and in many cases overshadowed by other cults; that sun, moon, and stars, sacred springs and stones, holy mountains, and animals of the most diverse kind, have all been approached with singular impartiality by primitive man, as enshrining or symbolising a divine principle. But no other form of pagan ritual has been so widely distributed, has left behind it such persistent traces, or appeals so closely to modern sympathies as the worship of the tree; of none is the study better calculated to throw light on the dark ways of primitive thought, or to arouse general interest in a branch of research which is as vigorous and fruitful as it is new. For these reasons, in spite of obvious disadvantages, its separate treatment has seemed to the writer to be completely justifiable.

Peter Jeffrey reads three of Rudyard Kipling's original classic short stories. Abandoned in the Indian jungle and rescued by a wolf pack, the man-cub Mowgli is educated in the ways of the jungle by Akela the Wolf, Baloo the Bear, Bagheera the Black Panther and Kaa the big Rock Python. They teach him to hunt and protect him from Shere Khan, the ever-present Bengal Tiger. As Mowgli grows up, the powers of pack leader Akela wane and Shere Khan persuades the younger wolves to attack the man-cub. However, Mowgli has been told by Bagheera to learn the secret of the Red Flower from the nearby man village, which he can use to protect himself from the tiger. Meanwhile, Shere Khan isn't the only animal with designs on Mowgli. The monkeys want him for their leader, and will even resort to kidnapping him! Includes three complete and unabridged stories: 'Mowgli’s Brothers', 'Kaa's Hunting' and 'Tiger! Tiger!'. This recording was previously released on cassette as 'Mowgli Stories'.