AbstractCell‐marking experiments using the vital dye Nile blue sulfate have shown that in embryos of the holostean fish Amia calva the first cleavage plane is normally the plane of bilateral symmetry, that no significant “in‐turning” of presumptive mesoderm occurs at the germ ring or terminal node, and that cells destined for the heart, head mesoderm, and foregut derivatives (adhesive organs and pharynx) are located near the animal pole already in late cleavage stages, rather than brought there by morphogenetic movements.As in teleosts, cells destined for the central nervous system (CNS), the first few somites, and also the kidneys and their longitudinal ducts are put in place directly by convergence of subsurface cells from less than the dorsal half of the blastoderm through the embryonic shield. While this is being completed the rest of the somite mesoderm is delivered to the body axis by convergence along the germ ring, which it has reached by earlier obliquely epibolic movements of internal cells.The outermost epithelium of the embryo moves chiefly by epibolic stretching and does not contribute significantly to any internal organ. Dye marks placed upon external cells of the rim of the germ ring or the terminal node remain there throughout epiboly, and those placed anterior to either the rim or the node fail to reach these. When dye carriers are placed upon the outer epithelium their dye is not only held within its cells, but by diffusion it is also brought to deeper cells that are destined for mesodermal and nervous structures. The convergent movements of these deeper cells tend to disengage them from the stained epithelium that originally covered them.The hindgut is apparently formed by the posterior hypoblast, a few cells of which may from time to time be seen from the outside of the embryo, protruding beyond some sector or other of the germ ring epiblast. The trunk‐tail bud is assembled as in teleosts by extension of the CNS, the notochord, the hindgut, and the primitive kidney ducts from the embryonic shield and also by the convergence of internal cells along the germ ring and from the mesodermal areola that is left by its closure.Rough charts of the morphogenetic movements before the major phase of differentiation and a first approximation of a fate map for Amia are presented. There is a discussion of the similarities and differences of these in comparison with those of teleosts and amphibia.