T 



CHAPTER X 



33. The Discovery of Gregor Mendel. 



f ■~^HE year 1900 marks the beginning of the modern period 

 in the study of heredity. Despite the fact that there had 

 been some development of the idea that a living organ- 

 ism is an aggregation of characters in the form of units of some 

 description, there had been no attempts to ascertain by experi- 

 ment, how such supposed units might behave in the offspring 

 of a cross. In the year above mentioned the papers of Gregor 

 Mendel came to light (5), being quoted almost simultaneously in 

 the scientific contributions of three European botanists, De Vries 

 in Holland (3), Correns in Germany (2), and Von Tschermak in 

 Austria (6). Of Mendel's two papers, the important one in this 

 connection, entitled "Experiments in Plant Hybridization," was 

 read at the meetings of the Natural History Society of Briinn in 

 Bohemia (Czecho-Slovakia) at the sessions of February 8 and 

 March 8, 1865. This paper had passed entirely unnoticed by the 

 scientific circles of Europe, although it appeared in 1866 in the 

 Transactions of the Society. From its publication until 1900, Men- 

 del's paper appears to have been completely overlooked, except 

 for the citations in Focke's "Pflanzenmischlinge," and the single 

 citation of Hoffmann, elsewhere referred to. 



Gregor Johann Mendel, a monk of the Augustinian order in 

 the Catholic Church, was the son of a small peasant farmer, and 

 his education was what he was able to secure at the village school, 

 supplemented by a course at the gymnasium at Tropau, finishing 

 with a year at Olmutz. After completing the course at the gymna- 

 sium, Mendel applied for admission to the Augustinian order of 

 the monastery of St. Thomas in Briinn, generally referred to as 

 the Konigskloster. In the school and in the gymnasium Mendel had 

 won distinction as a student, and on entering the monastery was 

 chosen to assist in the educational work of the religious order. 



