That he was thoroughly prepared for the third possibility appears constantly through the paper, notably in the argument based on the _Phaseolus_ hybrids, and in the statement that the hybrid between talls and dwarfs is generally taller than the tall parent, having increased height as its “hybrid-character.” All this Professor Weldon has missed. In place of it he offers us the _sententia_ that no one can expect to understand these phenomena if he neglect ancestry. This is the idle gloss of the scribe, which, if we erase it not thoroughly, may pass into the text. Enough has been said to show how greatly Mendel’s conception of heredity was in advance of those which pass current at the present day; I have here attempted the barest outline of the nature of the “hybrid-character,” and I have not sought to indicate the conclusions that we reach when the reasoning so clear in the case of the hybrid is applied to the pure forms and their own characters. In these considerations we reach the very base on which all conceptions of heredity and variation must henceforth rest, and that it is now possible for us to attempt any such analysis is one of the most far-reaching consequences of Mendel’s principle. Till two years ago no one had made more than random soundings of this abyss. I have briefly discussed these possibilities to assist the reader in getting an insight into Mendel’s conceptions. But in dealing with Professor Weldon we need not make this excursion; for his objection arising from the absence of uniform regularity in dominance is not in point. The soundness of Mendel’s work and conclusions would be just as complete if dominance be found to fail often instead of rarely. For it is perfectly certain that varieties _can_ be chosen in such a way that the dominance of one character over its antagonist is so regular a phenomenon that it _can_ be used in the way Mendel indicates. He chose varieties, in fact, in which a known character _was_ regularly dominant and it is because he did so that he made his discovery[79]. When Professor Weldon speaks of the existence of fluctuation and diversity in regard to dominance as proof of a “grave discrepancy” between Mendel’s facts and those of other observers[80], he merely indicates the point at which his own misconceptions began. [79] As has been already shown the discovery could have been made equally well and possibly with greater rapidity in a case in which the hybrid had a character distinct from either parent. The cases that would _not_ have given a clear result are those where there is irregular dominance of one or other parent. [80] Weldon, p. 240.