The anatomy and physiology of cornea has been described in reviews (Maurice, 1969; Davson, 1980). We are primarily concerned with the structure of the stroma of cornea. There are two levels of organization in the stroma: the collagen fibrils and the lamellae. Each lamella contains an array of collagen fibrils which appear as long thin cylinders in electron micrographs. The lamellae are parallel to the cornea surface and are at right angles to the light direction. Adjacent lamellae are approximately at right angles to each other. There are many lamellae (about 200) in the thickness of the stroma so that the different lamellae have on the average all possible orientations.

In earlier papers (Wyman, 1975a, b, 1981) I have called attention to the existence of a group of linkage potentials derivable from one another by a corresponding group of Legendre transformations. These potentials are applicable to any system in a state of equilibrium but are especially useful in the study of the behaviour, or, as we may say, the functional chemistry, of a macromolecule in the presence of its ligands. In this paper I show how these potentials may be represented by a set of contour graphs which embody the results of observation and are transformable into one another by a group of graphical permutations equivalent to the Legendre group.