[1]Somebody accidentally dropped the "l" from Amblystoma many years ago. Over the objection of Ross Harrison, one of the founders of contemporary experimental embryology (and one of this author's intellectual grandsires), taxonomist have taken up the genus name with the "l" missing. Harrison's peeve was that "ambly" means "blunt." With "stoma" meaning "mouth," Ambly (blunt) stoma (mouth) is descriptive of these blunt-mouthed creatures. "Amby," from ambi (as in ambidexterous) means "all around" or "both sides." Taxonomists eventually won out; in the 1990's you'd being black-balled from scientific publication if you sent an article to a journal with Amblystoma in it instead of Ambystoma.

[2]See Schneider, 1968.

[3]Many years later, Carl himself found that some species (other than punctatum) tend to chose dark versus light. [See Schneider, C.W. Marquette, B.W. and Pietsch, P. (1991) Measures of phototaxis and movement detection in the larval salamander. Physiology and Behavior 50: 645-647.]

[4]A man named L. S. Stone at Yale had transplanted eyes before Sperry. In fact, Stone even swapped eyes between different species. Did the latter animals eventually see? Depending on the species of donor, the host eventually saw better with its transplanted eyes than it had with its own. Naturally, Stone had his critics. But Carl Schneider and I went on years later to vindicate Stone. If you're on the World Wide Web and would like to read more about these experiments, me know at pietsch@indiana.edu and I'll send you the URL.

[5]To state this compactly, let T be the mean Triclops scores and X the mean rates of normal, two-eye animals. Then T = X + aX, where aX is the observed difference between the mean scores of two-eye and one-eyed animals.

[6]See Menaker, 1972.

[7]Incidentally, it was no less than Riemann who invented integration between specific limits.

[8]I can't recall the name of the book in question. But if you'd like to see an excellent representation of Riemann surfaces (as well as their practical uses in science and engineering--e.g., treating multi-valued function--see Kraut, E. A., Fundamentals of Mathematical Physics. McGraw-Hill, New York, 1967.

[9]See Schneider and Pietsch, 1968, p. 279.

[10]For a complete description of what I mean here, see "hypersurface" in Brillouin, 1964.

[11]Over the years, this phase of the story has become extensive and varied, and it's still going on. Here, I am homing in on the parts that are germane to our discussion. It you're interested in investigations of metachrosis, and are on the World Wide Web, let me know at the following internet, address, and I'll send you the URLs to sites where you can read about it:pietsch@indiana.edu.

[12]Go here to see how this alignment is made.

[13] See Pietsch, P. and Schneider, C.W. "Vision and the skin camouflage reactions of Ambystoma larvae: the effects of eye transplants and brain lesions." Brain Research vol. 340, 1985, Figures 9 and 10, p.46 .
Optically elicited camouflage reactions differ quantiatively in One-Eye versus Two-Eye we later discovered with an an image-analyzing computer. Go here to see the article on line.

[14] see Girard, L. J. et al, "Results of pleoptic treatment of suppression amblyopia." American Orthoptic Journal, vol. 12, pp. 12-31, 1966.

[15]Here's an imaginary experiment I advise you not to try physically but merely visualize. If you look at a page and press one of your eyes, you'll see double. Try to read the page while seeing double.

[16]See Menaker, 1972; Gregory, 1978.

[17]See R. M. and R. P. Warren, 1970.

[18] A former student of mine, Dr. Suzan Broerman, drew this cartoon when I asked if the idea in the narrative made any sense to her. She dropped by the next day to ask, "Is this what you mean?" It was. Suzie B, as she used to sign her cartoons and her notes remains among my all time favorite people. She actually drew the surface map on assignment for a series I'd wanted to include in the book. In my editor's opinion, the cartoons didn't quite work with the book. "Oh well," as Kurt Vonegut's books taught me to say.