Embryonic Development of Drosophila melanogaster

' . . . but our knowledge is so weak that no philosoph er will ever be able to completely explore the nature of even a fly . . . ' * Thornas Aquinas 'In Syrnbolurn Apostolorum' 079 RSV p/96 This is a monograph on embryogenesis of the fruit fly Drosophi- la melanogaster conceived as a reference book on morphology of embryonie development. A monograph of this extent and con- tent is not yet available in the literature of Drosophila embryolo- gy, and we believe that there is areal need for it. Thanks to the progress achieved during the last ten years in the fields of devel- opmental and molecular genetics, work on Drosophila develop- ment has considerably expanded creating an even greater need for the information that we present here. Our own interest for wildtype embryonie development arose several years ago, when we began to study the development of mutants. While those studies were going on we repeatedly had occasion to state in- sufficiencies in the existing literature about the embryology of the wildtype, so that we undertook investigating many of these problems by ourselves. Convinced that several of our colleagues will have encountered similar difficulties we decided to publish the present monograph. Although not expressely recorded, Thomas Aquinas probably referred to the domestic fly and not to the fruit fly. Irrespective of which fly he meant, however, we know that Thomas was right in any case.