Experiments on the Development of the Head of the Chick Embryo

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Abstract
1. Experiments were made on the development of the head of chicken embryos cultivated in vitro. 2. Defects in the presumptive head region of primitive streak embryos are regulated completely if the wound fills up before the histogenesis of neural tissue begins in the head-process stage. Different methods by which the hole is filled are described. 3. No repair occurs in the head-process and head-fold stages, and in this period two masses of neural tissue cannot heal together. 4. Median defects, even if repaired as regards neural tissue, cause a failure of the ventral closure of the foregut. The lateral evaginations of the gut develop typically in atypical situations. The headfold may break through and join up with the endoderm in such a way that the gut acquires an anterior opening. 5. The paired heart rudiments may develop separately. The separate vesicles begin to contract at a time appropriate to the development of the embryo as a whole. The two hearts are mirror images, the left one having the normal curvature, but the embryos do not survive long enough for the hearts to acquire a very definite shape. 6. The forebrain has a considerable capacity for repair in the early somite stages (five to twenty-five somites). One-half of the forebrain can remodel itself into a complete forebrain. In some cases the neural plate and epidermis grow together over the wound, in others the epidermis and mesenchyme make the first covering, leaving a space along the inside of which the neural tissue grows. The neural tissue may become a very thin sheet. 7. The repaired forebrain may induce the formation of a nasal placode from the non-presumptive nasal epidermis which covers the wound. 8. If the optic vesicle is entirely removed, a new one is not formed, but parts of the vesicle can regulate to complete eye-cups, either when still attached to the forebrain or after being isolated in the extra-embryonic regions of another embryo. 9. Injured optic vesicles induce lenses from the non-presumptive epidermis which grows over the wound. Transplanted optic neural tissue from embryos of about five somites induces the formation of lentoids from extra-embryonic ectoderm, but only in a small proportion of cases. 10. The presumptive lens epidermis can produce a slight thickening even when contact with the optic cup is prevented. 11. The significance of periods of minimum regulatory power for the concept of determination is discussed. 12. The data concerning lens formation are discussed in terms of the field concept.

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