The duration of gestation (embryonic or prenatal development in the mother's body) varies from three weeks with the mouse, eight weeks with the cat, nine months with the stag, to twenty months with the elephant. Like the birds, the young of some mammals, the carnivores for example, are helpless at birth, while those of others, as the hoofed mammals, are very soon able to run about. But all are nourished for a longer or shorter time by the milk secreted by the mammary gland of the mother. =Habits, instinct, and reason.=--Despite the wonderful examples of instinct and intelligence shown by many insects and by the other vertebrates, especially the birds, it is among mammals that we find the highest development of these qualities and of reason. In the wary and patient hunting for prey by the carnivora, in the gregarious and altruistic habits of the herding hoofed mammals, in the highly developed and affectionate care of the young shown by most mammals, and in the loyal friendship and self-sacrifice of dogs and horses in their relations to man, we see the culmination among animals of the development of the functions of the nervous system. In the characteristics of intelligence and reason man of course stands immensely superior to all other animals, but both intelligence and reason are too often shown by many of the other mammals not to make us aware that man's mental powers differ only in degree, not in kind, from those of other animals. Pure instinct is hereditary, and purely instinctive actions are common to all the individuals of a species. Those actions which the individual could not learn by teaching, imitation, or experience are instinctive. The accurate pecking at food by chicks just hatched from an incubator is purely instinctive. Purely instinctive also is the laying of eggs by a butterfly on a certain species of plant which may have to be sought for over wide acres, so that the caterpillars when hatched shall find themselves on their own special food-plant. Yet the butterfly never ate of this plant and will never see its young. Such elaborate instincts as these have been developed from the simplest manifestations of sensation and nervous function, just as the complex structures of the body have been developed from simple structures (see Chapter XXIX). The feeding and domestic habits and the whole general behavior of animals are extremely interesting subjects of observation and study. And such observation intelligently pursued will be of much value. The point to be kept ever in mind is that all animal habits are connected with certain conditions of life; that in every case there is an answer to the question "why." This answer may not be found; in many cases it is extremely difficult to get at, but often it is simple and obvious and can be found by the veriest beginner.