346 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



point which separates the permanent good of the exact facts of observa- 

 tion clearly and distinctly from the naturally and necessarily changing 

 expression of theoretical explanations, especially of fertile working 

 hypotheses. 



"In the autumn of 1899, I received from Prof. A. v. Liebenberg the 

 permission to volunteer in his department, and to make use of the library. 

 The first work I seized upon was the well-known book of Focke : 'Pflan- 

 zenmischlinge,' of 1881. There I found, in the chapter on 'Peas,' the 

 familiar obscure expression of Focke's concerning Mendel's treatise, as 

 well as the views on Mendel's experiments with beans and Hieraceae. 

 since Mendel's work was not on hand in the library of the Hochschule 

 fiir Bodenkultur, I had on the same day of this 'discovery' the 'Transac- 

 tions of the Natural History Society of Briinn,' hunted out of the Uni- 

 versity library, which now gave me the information, to my greatest sur- 

 prise, that the regular relationships discovered by me, had already been 

 discovered by Mendel much earlier. Still, I believed myself to be at this 

 time the only one who had made this discovery anew. By Christmas, my 

 paper was finished, ready for publication, and on the 17th of January, 

 1900, it was delivered at the rectorate of the Hochschule fiir Boden- 

 kultur, as an inaugural dissertation. In the beginning of April 1900, I 

 received from Hugo De Vries, whom I had visited from Ghent in the 

 year 1898, the article 'Sur la loi de disjonction des hj^brides' (March 26, 

 1900), in which De Vries, on pages 1-2 says: 'in the hybrid the simple 

 differential character of one of the parents is then visible or dominant, 

 while the antagonistic character is in the latent or recessive state.' I read 

 this sentence with the greatest interest, but also, frankly stated, with 

 consternation, for it was now quite clear to me that De Vries must also 

 know the work of Mendel, although it was not cited in this paper. For 

 me it was naturally, as a beginning docent, not indifferent that my work 

 should be anticipated, wherefore I immediately sought from the rectorate 

 the permission to let my already censored Avork be taken out and printed. 



"l have my friend Dr. Bersch to thank that my work was accepted 

 for the Zeitschrift fiir das landwirtschaftliche Versuchswesen in Oester- 

 reich, and the printing of it immediately undertaken. In the meantime 

 there appeared soon thereafter the extensive work of De Vries in the 

 Reports of the German Botanical Society (Heft 3). I was able to utilize 

 it already as early as during the correction of my proofs. On the reading 

 of the second proof I was surprised anew by the work of Correns (Ber. 

 d. d. Bot. Gesell. Heft 4, April 24). I was therefore able to take it into 

 consideration only in the footnote to my first paper. As may readily be 

 conceived, I now made every effort to induce the publisher of the journal 

 before-mentioned, as well as the printing office, to publish the separates 

 of my work before the appearance of the number in question, which, 

 fortunately, likewise succeeded (May, 1900). In the meantime, I wrote 

 quickly an abstract of my paper, for the Berichte der deutschen botan- 

 ischen Gesellschaft (received for publication June 2, Heft 6), which, 

 however, appeared somewhat later than the separates of my complete 

 paper, which I immediately sent out. 



"The classical significance of the Mendel work was at once clear to 

 me, for which reason, already in the year 1900, I made application for 

 its acceptance in Ostwald's 'Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften,' pro- 

 vided with notes of my own. They delayed, however, so long with the 



