Notes
A third tale featuring Taffy, thought to be based on Kipling's daughter Josephine or Effie, deceased, for whom "Just-So" stories had originated as bedtime tales.
The others are "How the First Letter Was Written" and "How the Alphabet was Made" -- commonly printed as the 8th and 9th stories in the collection; some collections include this story printed 10th
First published one year after the first Just So Stories collection
Published in Collier's Weekly 1903-08-29 (US) and Windsor Magazine 1903-09 (UK monthly, [p363])
--per Lesnik-Oberstein Children's Literature: New Approaches 2004; citing the Oxford World's Classics edition of Just So Stories, ed. Lisa Lewis, which includes the tale as Appendix A, p189-211
(Length probably 6000 to 7000 words, estimate from Appendix B, p213-18, available in preview online)
Featured in Kirkus Reviews 1993-11-01 (posted 2010): "very long ... and the most didactic of all" in The Complete Just So Stories