MENDEL'S DISCOVERY 197 



John Goss was born in Hatherleigh and baptized 

 on June 27, 1787. He is next heard of as a lad 

 who cleaned boots and did other odd jobs in the 

 Rectory at Iddesleigh, where the Eector took a num- 

 ber of pupils. One of these became interested in 

 Goss and helped to educate him with a view to his 

 entering the Church. But Goss had " scruples," 

 and he became an usher in a school. He was an 

 active and inventive man. He made an orrery, i.e. 

 a model of the solar system, a reading-book for 

 teaching the aged poor to read, and a calculating 

 machine. What a pity he did not conduct his 

 hybridisation experiments on so large a scale that 

 the services of this machine were required ! 



At the age of 26 he married, under romantic 

 circumstances. A lady came one day to Hather- 

 leigh to visit an old servant, and created a sensa- 

 tion in this out-of-the-way village by driving up 

 to her door in a post-chaise. On getting out of her 

 carriage she stumbled and would have fallen but for 

 the timely intervention of a young man, who stepped 

 forward and saved her. This was John Goss. He 

 was sent for to be thanked for his services. They 

 were married on March 6th, 1813. His wife was 

 twenty-nine years older than he was. At their 

 marriage he was 26, and she was 55, It was during 

 his married life that he made the crosses with peas 

 (in 1820) and sent his note of them to the Royal 

 Horticultural Society (1822). It may be that the 

 carrying out of this experiment was made possible 

 by a leisure which he owed to his wife. He speaks of 



