16 MENDELISM chap, ii 



differences. The number of striking cases from among 

 widely different plants which he was able to bring forward 

 went far to convincing biologists that discontinuity in 

 variation was a more widespread phenomenon than had 

 hitherto been suspected, and not a few began to question 

 whether the account of the mode of evolution so generally 

 accepted for forty years was after all the true account. 

 Such in brief was the outlook in the central problem of 

 biology at the time of the rediscovery of Mendel's work. 



