FOREWORD TO FIRST EDITION 



During the last 50 years the volume of mounting cytological data has reached truly- 

 imposing proportions and particularly is this true of our knowledge of the number of 

 chromosomes and their meiotic behavior in various species of animals and plants. 

 Since such information is constantly being utilized in different biological fields — 

 especially by cytologists and geneticists — it was recognized many years ago that some 

 kind of systematic presentation of the accumulated information is urgently necessary. 

 The excellent lists of animal chromosomes published by E. Browne Harvey in 1916 and 

 1920 were a response to this need and they at once became an accepted tool in the workshop 

 of a great number of biologists. 



But though new findings were added rapidly after 1920, no further dependable lists 

 of animal chromosomes appeared until 1937. To be sure, several compilations were 

 published during the intervening years, but they were either avowedly circumscribed 

 in aim or else were incomplete and unreliable — two faults that rendered them almost 

 worse than useless. The splendid tabulation of vertebrate chromosomes published by 

 Oguma and Makino in 1937 therefore received a warm welcome and has proved its usefulness 

 again and again, but unfortunately no comparable treatment of invertebrate chromosomes 

 has made its appearance. 



The n<=ws that a complete listing of animal chromosomes has now been compiled is 

 therefore most gratifying. All the more is this true since its author is Professor 

 Sajiro Makino, whose participation in the earlier listing already mentioned would seem 

 to promise an equal reliability in the present work. That it records data on some 2800 

 species, more than two and a half times as many as were included in the two Harvey lists, 

 sufficiently indicates the urgent necessity for this new compilation. The exacting and 

 extensive toil that must have been expended on it by its author will no doubt be rewarded 

 by the appreciation of a very large audience of biologists. 



FRANZ SCHRADER 



March 23, 1948 

 Department of Zoology 

 Columbia University 



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