The pathogenesis of chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) infection with herpes simplex virus 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) as well as chick embryo fibroblast (CEF) passaged HSV-1 was studied. It was found that HSV-2 is at least a million-fold more virulent than HSV-1 as measured by pfu/LD50 ratios for the embryo. Serial passage of HSV-1 in vitro on CEF cells selected for a virus (CEFP10) which, unlike its parental HSV-1 strain, is able to kill the embryo. The restriction endonuclease maps of CEFP10 and its parental strain are indistinguishable and the mechanism of the increased virulence of CEFP10 was demonstrated to be its enhanced replication in chick embryo cells both in vivo and in vitro. In contrast, despite its inferior replicative ability, HSV-2 was found to have a biologically important specific invasiveness function that is not simply related to overall viral replication. Finally, the ability to isolate HSV-1 (CEFP10) virulent for the chick embryo after passage in vitro illustrates that tissue culture passage of HSV in appropriate cells may actually increase virulence for the animal host.