Mendel’s results have received confirmation by a number of more recent workers, and while in some cases the results appear to be complicated by other factors, yet there can remain little doubt that Mendel has discovered one of the fundamental laws of heredity. It has been found that there are some cases in which the sort of inheritance postulated by Mendel’s law does not seem to hold, and, in fact, Mendel himself spoke of such cases. He found that some kinds of hybrids do not break up in later generations into the parent forms. He also points out that in cases of discontinuity the variations in each character must be separately regarded. In most experiments in crossing, forms are chosen which differ from each other in a multitude of characters, some of which are continuous and others discontinuous, some capable of blending with their contraries while others are not. The observer in attempting to discover any regularity is confused by the complications thus introduced. Mendel’s law could only appear in such cases by the use of an overwhelming number of examples which are beyond the possibilities of experiment.[25] Footnote 25: This statement is largely taken from Bateson’s book. Let us now examine the bearing of these discoveries on the questions of variation which were raised in the preceding pages. It should be pointed out, however, that it would be premature to do more than indicate, in the most general way, the application of these conclusions. The chief value of Mendel’s results lies in their relation to the theory of inheritance rather than to that of evolution. In the first place, Mendel’s results indicate that we cannot make any such sharp distinction as Darwin does between the results of inheritance of discontinuous and of continuous variations. As Mendel’s results show, it is the separate characters that must be considered in each case, and not simply the sum total of characters.