During the past years developmental biology has rapidly moved toward the center of interest of many biological and medical disciplines. Reviews and technical articles dealing with some facet of this complex, but fascinating, field have appeared in the journals of bacterialogy, biochemistry, and pathology, as well as of pediatrics and orthopedic surgery.
A wide variety of approaches to the study of development are discussed in ten slender volumes which represent the record of the "Developmental Biology Series, 1956," the proceedings of a series of conferences organized by Paul Weiss.
One of these conferences deals with environmental influences of prenatal development. The report of this meeting starts with remarks on the increasing significance of congenital abnormalities as a subject of medical and, in particular, of pediatric concern. The discussion turns then to the interesting work dealing with the problem of the specificity of teratological agents, to the time of their interference