We have studied the age-dependence of the effects of kainate (KA) on the chick retina as a prelude to the accompanying paper on the effects of target-removal on the isthmo-optic nucleus. KA was injected into the eyes of chick embryos and chicks at different ages, and the retinas were fixed a few hours or several days later. The former group of retinas was scanned for pyknotic cells. The earliest age at which KA caused pyknosis was embryonic day 10 (E10), when pyknotic cells appeared in a ventrotemporal patch in the amacrine sublayer near the fundus. Over the next two days the sensitive region expanded tangentially, reaching the periphery first temporally, then nasally. Only after E12 did the KA cause pyknotic cells to occur also in the bipolar sublayer, where the sensitivity spread in the same spatiotemporal sequence as the initial wave, but two days later. Cell loss was examined in embryos that survived a week or more after the KA injection. Substantial cell depletion was found in both the inner nuclear and ganglion cell layers, but only when the injection had been made after E12. With progressively later injections, the depleted zone expanded in the same spatiotemporal sequence as described above, until at E15 the injections caused depletion throughout the entire extent of the retina. The reasons for the lack of cell depletion after KA injections made before E12 are discussed. Cell counts in the ganglion cell layer and studies of anterograde transport of intravitreally injected peroxidase along the retinofugal fibers showed that about half the ganglion cells (including the displaced ganglion cells) pass through a period of vulnerability to the KA injections, to which they subsequently become sensitive.