Translate Paragraph 4 Mendeleev left a number of gaps in his table. Instead of looking upon those blank spaces as defects, he boldly predicted the existence of elements as yet undiscovered. Furthermore, he even predicted the properties of some of these missing elements. In succeeding years, many of the gaps were filled in by the discovery of new elements. The properties were often quite close to those Mendleev had predicted. The predictive value of this great innovation led to the wide acceptance of Mendeleev's table.