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Transcriber's Note

Illustration captions in {brackets} have been added by the
transcriber, with reference to the list of illustrations, for the
convenience of the reader.




                      THE
               ANIMAL STORY BOOK

                   EDITED BY
                  ANDREW LANG


  _WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD_


       [Illustration: {TWO ORAN OTANS}]


           LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
     FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
      LONDON, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
                     1914


              _Copyright, 1896,_
           By Longmans, Green, & Co.

            _All rights reserved._

        First Edition, September, 1896.
    Reprinted, November, 1896, July, 1899,
          June, 1904, February, 1909,
               September, 1914.




    THE FAIRY BOOK SERIES

    Edited by Andrew Lang

    _New and Cheaper Issue_


    EACH VOLUME, $1.00 NET


    THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK. With 138 Illustrations.

    THE RED FAIRY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations.

    THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK. With 101 Illustrations.

    THE GREY FAIRY BOOK. With 65 Illustrations.

    THE YELLOW FAIRY BOOK. With 104 Illustrations.

    THE PINK FAIRY BOOK. With 67 Illustrations.

    THE BLUE POETRY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations.

    THE TRUE STORY BOOK. With 66 Illustrations.

    THE RED TRUE STORY BOOK. With 100 Illustrations.

    THE ANIMAL STORY BOOK. With 67 Illustrations.

    THE RED BOOK OF ANIMAL STORIES. With 65 Illustrations.

    THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. With 66 Illustrations.

    THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK. With 8  Plates and 54 other
      Illustrations.

    THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK. With 8  Plates and 43 other
      Illustrations.

    THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK. With 8  Plates and 42 other
      Illustrations.

    THE OLIVE FAIRY BOOK. With 8  Plates and 43 other
      Illustrations.

    THE ORANGE FAIRY BOOK. With 8  Plates and 50 other
      Illustrations.

    THE BOOK OF ROMANCE. With 8  Plates and 44 other
      Illustrations.

    THE RED ROMANCE BOOK. With 8  Plates and 44 other
      Illustrations.

    THE BOOK OF PRINCES AND PRINCESSES. By Mrs. Lang. With 8
       Plates and 43 other Illustrations.

    THE RED BOOK OF HEROES. By Mrs. Lang. With 8  Plates
      and 40 other Illustrations.

    THE LILAC FAIRY BOOK. With 6  Plates and 46 other
      Illustrations.

    THE ALL SORTS OF STORIES BOOK. By Mrs. Lang. With 5 
      Plates and 43 other Illustrations.

    THE BOOK OF SAINTS AND HEROES. By Mrs. Lang. With 12 
      Plates and 18 other Illustrations.

    THE STRANGE STORY BOOK. By Mrs. Lang. With Portrait of Andrew
      Lang, 12  Plates and 18 other Illustrations.


    LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., NEW YORK




  [Illustration: ANDROCLES IN THE ARENA]




    _To_

    _MASTER FREDERICK LONGMAN_


    This year our Book for Christmas varies,
    Deals not with History nor Fairies
      (I can't help thinking, children, you
      Prefer a book which is _not_ true).
    We leave these intellectual feasts,
    To talk of Fishes, Birds, and Beasts.
      These--though his aim is hardly steady--
      These are, I think, a theme for Freddy!
    Trout, though he is not up to fly,
    He soon will catch--as well as I!
      So, Freddy, take this artless rhyme,
      And be a Sportsman in your time!




_PREFACE_


Children who have read our Fairy Books may have noticed that there are
not so very many fairies in the stories after all. The most common
characters are birds, beasts, and fishes, who talk and act like
Christians. The reason of this is that the first people who told the
stories were not very clever, or, if they were clever, they had never
been taught to read and write, or to distinguish between Vegetable,
Animal, and Mineral. They took it that all things were'much of a
muchness:' they were not proud, and held that beast and bird could
talk like themselves, only, of course, in a different language.

After offering, then, so many Fairy Books (though the stories are not
all told yet), we now present you (in return for a coin or two) with a
book about the friends of children and of fairies--the beasts. The
stories are all true, more or less, but it is possible that Monsieur
Dumas and Monsieur Theophile Gautier rather improved upon their tales.
I own that I have my doubts about the bears and serpents in the tales
by the Baron Wogan. This gentleman's ancestors were famous Irish
people. One of them held Cromwell's soldiers back when they were
pursuing Charles II. after Worcester fight. He also led a troop of
horse from Dover to the Highlands, where he died of a wound, after
fighting for the King. The next Wogan was a friend of Pope and Swift;
he escaped from prison after Preston fight, in 1715, and, later,
rescued Prince Charlie's mother from confinement in Austria, and took
her to marry King James. He next became Governor of Don Quixote's
province, La Mancha, in Spain, and was still alive and merry in 1752.
Baron Wogan, descended from these heroes, saw no longer any king to
fight for, so he went to America and fought bears. No doubt he was as
brave as his ancestors, but whether all his stories of serpents are
absolutely correct I am not so certain. People have also been heard to
express doubts about Mr. Waterton and the Cayman. The terrible tale of
Mr. Gully and his deeds of war I _know_ to be accurate, and the story
of Oscar, the sentimental tyke, is believed in firmly by the lady who
wrote it. As for the stories about Greek and Roman beasts, Pliny, who
tells them, is a most respectable author. On the whole, then, this is
more or less of a true story-book.

There ought to be a moral; if so, it probably is that we should be
kind to all sorts of animals, and, above all, knock trout on the head
when they are caught, and don't let the poor things jump about till
they die. A chapter of a very learned sort was written about the
cleverness of beasts, proving that there must have been great
inventive geniuses among beasts long ago, and that now they