Where pigment was present within the cells (sarcoma), the attraction-spheres were represented by quite clear unpigmented areas, sometimes with a centrosome in their midst.
In these animals the eyeball and the fur of the body are unpigmented, but the tips of the ear pinnae and extremities of the fore and hind limbs, together with the tail, are marked by more or less well defined colour.
Allen, that partial albinism is a condition in which pigment is reduced around definite body centres, so that unpigmented areas occur between the pigment patches or at their borders.
The reason of this is readily understood when it is borne in mind how disadvantageous to the function of sight is the unpigmented condition of an albino's eyeball; a disadvantage which would be probably much accentuated, in the cases now under consideration, by the bright glare from the surface of the snow, which forms the natural environment of these animals at the particular period of the year when the winter change occurs.
More remarkable is the case of certain cattle, whose skin is piebald, marked by a general ground colour over which are scattered patches of unpigmented coat.