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General Embryological Information Service (1949)

Title page.

Introduction

The foundation of a GENERAL EMBRYOLOGICAL INFORM TION SERVICE was an experiment on a large scale. Success or failure depended not on the activity of one institute alone, but on the general interest, goodwill and active cooperation of all embryologists the world over.

Surveying the progress of our common project at the end of its first year, we can say that it has achieved a real success. In our first issue one can find data on the current investigations of more than 550 workers in the field of Embryology.

The great interest shown in this undertaking must be based on a general desire for better international contact and cooperation with colleagues all over the world. We have had enthusiastic letters from many correspondents. This general establishment of contact may be of very great importance for the progress of Science especially in more isolated countries. The fact that the Hubrecht Laboratory has helped in the fulfilment of such a widespread need is a real pleasure to us.

We will not conceal however that this first attempt has not yet achieved complete success. Not every embryologist was reached, since many addresses were unknown to us. With the help of our colleagues we tried to supplement our list of addresses, which indeed grew very quickly in the course of this year. In the second place, we have not yet received information from every institute to which our circulars were sent. We could not, indeed, expect a direct collaboration of every institute in this first year, as the significance of our project may not have appeared immediately to everybody. Propaganda remains, indeed, important 1 )- We expect, however, a much better understanding of our enterprise after we have distributed this first issue of the G.E.I.S., in which unfortunately a few institutes must still be marked ,,data not yet received". We hope and expect that we can offer you a complete survey of current embryo- logical work in the issue for the year 1950.

The development of the rather extensive organisation has taken more time than we had hoped when we started this project in the spring of last year. As our list of addresses grew only gradually, circulars could not be sent to many institutes before the summer of this year, so that their data did not arrive until the beginning of the autumn. We cannot therefore offer you this first issue before the beginning of 1950. We hope, however, that the organisation will run more smoothly in its second year. We will try to send you the second issue in the last quarter of 1950.

I will briefly discuss the arangement of chapters b — e and the contents of chapters f — h.

Chapter b gives the alphabetical list of names with addresses. The present collaborators of the G.E.I.S. have been marked with *.

Chapter c contains the list of institutes and has been arranged according to a geographical order, which forms the best supplement to the alpha- betical list of chapter b. The institutes have been grouped according to continent, country, district, town and street. Within each of these groups we use an alphabetic arrangement. Members of the staff have been placed in the left column, embryologists not belonging to the staff in the right column. Three groups of institutes can be distinguished:

a. Those institutes which are mainly concerned with embryology or which have a separate embryological department with a rather extensive staff of embryological workers.

b. Those institutes, in which only a small number of embryologists are working (individual workers).

c. Those institutes, from which we have not yet received information. They are included in order to give as complete a survey as possible of all embryological Institutes. They have been marked "data not yet received".

The size of this issue compelled us to restrict the data concerning the composition of staffs to the embryological workers and directors only.

In chapter d you will find the names of embryologists and the subjects on which they are working. This chapter has given us some trouble. especially in those cases, in which forms have not been filled in completely.

The indices at the end of each subject refer to the arrangement in the next chapter.

Chapter e with the classification of data according to subjects has, however, given the greatest trouble, again especially when forms have not been filled in completely 1 ), or when investigations deal with more than one of the main groups distinguished in our general classification. Sometimes it was necessary to divide a subject into two separate ones, and in a few cases it was even impossible to classify an investigation in the right place. We, therefore, urgently request every collaborator to give us complete data!

The order of classification into subjects is of course a more or less arbitrary one. We have tried to develop the most practical system. We classified the investigations according to general group, general subject, special subject and only finally according to systematic group. The arrangement according to subject could be followed out completely in the case of special investigations, but was soon exhausted in the case of general investigations, so that here we soon fell back upon the systematic order (cf. the general rubrics I. 2, II. 2, Ilia. 2 and Illb. 2). This was also the case with investigations on Invertebrates, as the classification into subjects used here, holds good mainly for Vertebrates. Therefore, the systematic arrangement was directly applied within the general subjects for investigations on Invertebrates.

The names of cooperating embryologists have been arranged alphabetically.

The enormous variety of subjects did not allow any entirely consistent and adequate classification, so that in several cases an investigation could have been classified under more than one heading. In order to avoid an enormous extention of this issue we tried to classify every investigation under one heading only, which, however, often required a Solomon's judgment. We have, therefore, added supplementary indices, placed behind the corresponding line, which refer to other headings under which the investigation in question can also be placed. The indices before the corresponding line refer to the systematic group.

In the above mentioned chapters b — e we have not translated the text received in order to avoid any change in its character. For the same reason any correction of the text has been restricted as much as possible.

We hope that chapter f will develop into a section in which every embryologist will record new practical technical methods or his own experiences with new technics; in general, data which would not be published otherwise, or which are in danger of being neglected. These annotations can be inserted in the form of references to little known publications, or in the form of very short notes, in which only the essential data are given. The examples may further demonstrate the intended contents of this section.

Chapter g will discuss general questions and projects, which are of importance and interest to every embryologist. (Cf. the project of the Central Embryological Library at the Hubrecht Laboratory, and that of the Normal Table of Xenopus laevis).

Chapter h will finally be destined for communications from the "Institut International d'Embryologie".

Image and text source: http://archive.org/details/generalembryolog011949hubr